The Longest Night (I promise - I can't promise)
by Fox in the Stars
Summary: When Yona and her friends need shelter for the winter, Kija insists on bringing them to White Dragon Village for a traditional solstice festival honoring his ancestors. The ritual brings messages from the world of the dead, including a visit from the most honored white dragon ancestor of all — but what begins as a joyous meeting threatens to become a tragedy.
1. Warmth and Welcome

_Notes:_

 _This story starts out fluffy but contains heavy angst, the possibility of a major character death plus references to canonical character deaths, and brief but intense violence. See the endnotes if you need spoilers._

 _Thanks to Filbert for last-minute beta reading and to EHyde for advance reading and art (coming soon at Ao3). Thanks also to everyone at WIP Big Bang for the impetus to finish this discursive, melodramatic, wonderful mess._

 _This is a spiritual sequel to Not All Chains are Forged of Iron (although I don't think it's come out quite as elegantly). The idea was firming up while I was finishing that story, so I put in some things in passing that I'll be using now, and I will refer to events from Not All Chains, but you should be okay even if you haven't read it._

 _Also, the idea for this story was already firming up and I'd already done the major world-building when the New Years bonus chapter of the manga came out. I actually like some of what I came up with in attempts to work around getting "jossed," but there may still be some inconsistencies. I also took liberties relative to real life; Korean New Year (like Chinese New Year) is actually the_ second _new moon after the solstice, but hey, at least I acknowledged that they're probably on a lunisolar calendar._

 _Anyone who wants to use my work as a basis for their own fanfic, fanart, podfic, translation, etc. has my permission to do so. Just credit me as appropriate._

* * *

Yona kept traveling with Hak and Yoon and the four dragons even after the year moved beyond the heights of summer and began its descent into cooler winds and longer nights. The forests dressed regally in their autumn colors were a beautiful sight for all of them, but the reds and golds soon faded to brown, and they had barely finished doing so when winter sent an early announcement of its coming arrival.

On that day, the wind blew hard and cold, driving a light rain like darts of ice. No overhang or lea of shelter would protect them as the rain sliced in one direction then another, and the gales nearly snatched their tent from their hands when they tried to put it up. Kija tore the cloth holding onto it with his claw and getting it under control, and in the crackling rain and howling wind his apologies sounded quiet with distance although he was only feet from the others.

"It's all right, I'll patch it," Yoon shouted. "But this is not going to work! Jae-ha, can you get us to the nearest town?"

"I thought you'd never ask," he replied, and his teeth chattered.

He took Yoon and Zeno first, so that Yoon could arrange lodgings with one of the dragons as a beacon for the others. Then Hak, so that a guard would be waiting, then Yona.

He brought her to the town not in one soaring leap, but in a series of relatively short hops. "Apologies for the bumpy ride, Yona dear."

She didn't mind. It was even an enjoyable thrill as her insides took a moment to follow each bound and crest of arc. Besides, she understood. "I'm fine. If you jumped high, you'd get blown around in this wind, wouldn't you?"

"That's half of it," he said. He alighted and took another bound before explaining the other half. "Also, the higher you go, the colder it gets. I can appreciate sparkling ice and the stark beauty of fresh snow, but I'm afraid winter is not my most becoming season." Once, when he'd been young and desperate to escape his village, he'd hit upon the idea of jumping with all his strength into a winter storm, thinking that surely his predecessor wouldn't follow him. Luckily he'd been wrong. Luckily he hadn't shattered when he hit the ground.

When they reached the town, he went back for Shin-ah and finally for Kija, and by the time they caught up, Yoon had found them a room. With all their clothes and gear hung or laid to dry, there was scarcely an inch of space to spare, but it was enough. The fire-heat within the walls felt better than it ever had since their journey had begun. Yona wasn't sure it had ever been this much of a relief for her to be warm and dry.

All night the wind howled and the fine rain hissed against the walls of the inn. When Yona woke in the early dim gray of the next morning, she could still hear it, but she'd been wakened by another sound, muted jingling and clinking close beside her. She had lain next to Yoon out of habit from all their nights sharing the tent, and he was sitting up sorting their money into fastidious stacks. He caught her eye and looked a little apologetic but went on with his counting, and when everyone was awake and breakfast was served, he announced his judgment.

"We have a problem," he said. "I knew it was coming, just not quite this fast."

Hak and Jae-ha nodded in resigned agreement, but Yona looked at him questioningly.

"We're not going to get through the winter like this," he explained. "We can't afford to stay in inns all the time. If we camp, we'll need more clothes, more gear, more food than normal right when it'll be harder to forage, and if we got caught in bad weather we'd still be in serious trouble. It's just not going to work.

"We need to find someplace to winter over," he said at last.

Hak summed it up: "So we're grasshoppers, and we need to find some charitable ants."

"Have I ever mentioned how much I hate that story?" Jae-ha asked rhetorically.

Hak opened his mouth for some sarcastic reply —

— But Kija spoke first. "In that case, we should return to my village," he said.

"That was one of the places I thought of," Yoon agreed. "We can count on being welcome there, and we can count on nobody finding us. The other options I came up with —"

"No, please!" Kija interrupted. He stepped around his breakfast tray, turned to face the others as best he could, and bowed down to the floor. "I ask this of all of you. To offer you our hospitality for a season would mean so much to my people, and it would mean a great deal to me to be there for the Ancestors' Festival this year of all years."

Zeno and Shin-ah nodded, and Hak gave an assenting shrug, but Yona was frowning.

"We could at least hear everything Yoon has to say," Jae-ha suggested. For him, spending months in a dragon village was not an appealing prospect — even if he had heard interesting things about the women there — but the argument was half-lost already.

"Please! Forgive me for making a self-indulgent request!" Kija insisted, delivering a final blow. "If you grant me this, I swear I will ask for nothing else!"

Yona smiled at him. "Kija, you should really ask us for things whenever you want. It's just that, if something happens while we're there…"

"Don't worry, Princess," Hak told her. "No one will want to start a war in the winter."

"And if something does happen, we won't be much help if we freeze to death or starve," Yoon added testily.

The sharp edge of annoyance in his voice finally made Yona realize how serious he was. Running out of money for food and for shelter from the cold or getting caught camping in a blizzard really would be a matter of life and death for all of them — or all of them but Zeno, which only made it worse — and she felt chastened for not understanding that fully from the start. Of course, she'd spent every previous winter snug inside a castle; it seemed that every time she thought she'd left that sheltered naiveté behind, she tripped embarrassingly over some leftover scrap of it.

Hak saw her relent. "Well, sounds like we've decided: White Snake gets his way," he remarked.

"So it seems," Jae-ha admitted.

* * *

They booked one more night at the inn while Yoon patched the tent and they waited for the weather to break; the expense wasn't such a concern now that they knew their funds didn't have to last indefinitely.

While they spent the day in town, Yona found a traveling merchant bound for Suiko, who agreed for a small fee to take a letter for one of the guards at the castle — addressing a message to Tetra seemed less likely to raise suspicions than addressing it directly to Lili.

 _'The flying-kick dancer and her traveling entertainers are forever grateful for your kindness_ ,' Yona wrote after some thought. ' _We are taking a break from performing to spend the winter somewhere warm, but we will certainly return in the spring with hope in our hearts that you will see us again. When that time comes we will be at your service.'_

Of course, there were many people they'd met in their travels whom she might have sent word to, but with Tae-jun it wasn't a relationship that should bear the weight of their secrets, Captain Gi-gan would simply assume they were taking care of themselves… Lili seemed to be the one who needed a message, who would expect to meet again soon and be distressed if Yona and her friends vanished without a word.

There was also concern within the group directed outward. Yoon tried to sound casual when he suggested looking in on Ik-soo, but he was obviously worried, and so they planned their route accordingly.

When they set out the following morning, they found that the storm had stripped the trees nearly bare in a single assault. Thin branches clawed at a pale gray sky, and it really felt as if the year had made a decisive turn toward winter. Even in the days that followed when the sun broke through and shone warmly, it was now only a temporary reprieve.

As a further confirmation of the shift, suddenly Ao was hardly seen. If she wasn't actively eating or collecting food, she was curled up snug and warm as a lump inside Shin-ah's clothes, where his belt gave a solid bottom to the space inside his robe. Sometimes he dropped nuts down his collar for her, and the lump shifted and quivered adorably as she retrieved and ate them.

When they arrived at Ik-soo's house, they found it a shambles as usual, but somehow he had laid in enough firewood and provisions to see him safely through — more than enough for one person, but not enough for two. He smiled, he even cried, but he'd left no room for Yoon to return to the nest, even for one season. They stayed a couple of days and helped Yoon reassemble the house to his satisfaction — for however long it would last — and then they set out along the route Yona and Hak and Yoon had taken so many months before, toward White Dragon Village.

* * *

As they wound their way up the mountain, Kija fairly beamed with happiness. "Everyone in the village will be so happy and honored to see all of you. They haven't had the chance to meet any of my fellow Dragon Warriors — and one of the founders, no less!"

Zeno smiled shyly and rubbed at his hair. "Zeno's really not so special."

"Nonsense! The history you've seen! Our scribes will have so many questions!"

Jae-ha leaned over to Zeno. "Now I see why you kept your secret so long. If you'd rather keep it a little longer, my lips are sealed."

"No, it's all right. Zeno wouldn't want to stop White Dragon from being honest."

Kija had flown off to the next shining thought. "And in the year we're together at last, to have you all here for the Ancestors' Festival… I really can't tell you all how grateful I am."

"You mentioned before, how you wanted to be there for it," Yona said, coming to walk alongside him. "The Ancestors' Festival — is that like New Years Eve?"

He blinked at her. "It _is_ New Years Eve."

"It's been called a bunch of different things," Zeno offered.

"I forget how long New Years is this year," Hak admitted.

Yoon had the answer. "The moon won't be full yet on the solstice, so it'll be a long one, maybe three weeks."

He felt a tug on his sleeve and turned to find Shin-ah looking at him with a tilt of his head.

"'New Years'…? 'Solstice'…?"

Kija blinked again, but Yoon explained without a second thought. "You know how nights get longer in winter and shorter in summer," he said.

It wasn't a question, but Shin-ah nodded.

"Well, the winter solstice is the longest night of the year, and it's also the last night of the year. The day before that, on New Years Eve, people spend the day visiting graves and making offerings."

"In Awa, it's really quite festive," Jae-ha offered. "Shops sell special food, and music is everywhere. The town decorates boats full of offerings for people who've been lost at sea, then there's a parade to bring them down to the harbor and fireworks as they're towed out and burned. I could have gotten us a room with a beautiful view…"

"That does sound like fun," Yona agreed. "At the palace it was always more solemn. I was taught that that's when the old year dies, so New Years Eve was like a day of mourning for the year and for all the people who've passed away."

"In the village, the night of the solstice is solemn," Kija said. "The way it was taught to me was that the light of the sun gives life, and so the longest night of the year is when the world of the dead is closest. Every year, we take the opportunity for a feast and a ceremony inviting our ancestors to visit us. The current white dragon wears our founder's necklace, and sometimes the ancestors speak through them. They've never spoken through me, though," he admitted sadly. "Still, just to think of them being able to see you all at last —"

"Wait, let me make sure I heard that right," Jae-ha interrupted. "At this festival, you _invite_ ghosts to possess you?"

"I don't know why they haven't!" Kija lamented. "I'd feel better if it happened even once!"

Shin-ah put his hands in front of Kija in a _'wait, not so fast'_ gesture, and he shook his head in some distress.

"Oh, Zeno doesn't think White Dragon needs to worry about that."

Jae-ha deemed the others' responses sufficient to stand for him as well. Suddenly, though, he wished he'd tried harder to win the 'where are we wintering over?' argument.

"Anyway," Yoon picked up his explanation again, "the dawn after the night of the solstice starts the New Years holiday, and that lasts until the night of the next new moon. Dawn after _that_ is when the new year actually starts. So New Years can be as little as a day or as long as a month."

"If it's too short, the first week gets treated as a holiday regardless," Hak added. "Everyone who can takes a break from work, and they visit relatives or just get together to eat and dance and sing."

"My father always spent New Years secluding himself to pray at the Red Dragon King's shrine," Yona said, a little sadly.

"I see;" Kija nodded. "I can understand that. It's said that the Red Dragon King was captured and condemned on the solstice, and that he was rescued by the Dragon Warriors on the next new moon."

"Mm, Zeno's heard that."

"Ah, yes, but has he _seen_ it?" Jae-ha questioned.

"Mmmmm, nope. I remember it was spring because the travel was easier, and then the first night we were all together, the moon was really bright…"

"So many questions from the scribes…" Kija shook his head.

And after the reminder of how different everyone's traditions could be, he felt obligated to let them know just what to expect. "On the day of the new moon, the village holds a feast to give thanks to the dragon god for another year of divine protection and pray for blessings in the year ahead. Then the dawn of the new year is greeted with music and dancing, and it's…"

His words suddenly ran dry. A strange look came over his face.

Yona blinked at him curiously.

"It's a propitious day for… celebrating marriages and… conceiving… children… or so I've been told." The last words tumbled out desperate haste.

Jae-ha privately favored him with a wry, sidelong glance. Just now Kija seemed to wish that he hadn't tried so hard win that argument.

* * *

As they kept climbing, Yona watched for the fog that had clouded their way as a warning the first time they'd searched for the village, but it never came. The white-robed archers appeared from the trees in the clear, cold air, and bowed.

A bearded man spoke for the sentries. "Your Majesty Red Dragon! Lord White Dragon! You've returned! And these others with you…?"

"Yes, these are my fellow dragon warriors," Kija said. "Since I left the village, we've been working for the greater good of this kingdom without a thought for our own provision, and now with winter closing in, we must find shelter from the cold. I have taken it upon myself to offer the village's hospitality. I beg your indulgence for putting you all to such trouble." He bowed to the still-kneeling villagers.

Several of them leapt to their feet and burst out in protest.

"Lord White Dragon, how can you say that!?"

"Don't bow to us!"

"As if we wouldn't be honored!"

A messenger had already been sent ahead to announce their arrival. The bearded man who had spoken first and some of the younger archers detached themselves from the watch to escort the party.

"Has everything been well in the village?" Kija asked the older man.

"Of course! Lord White Dragon himself entrusted us with keeping the village safe — how could we let anything happen?"

"And the elder?"

"Her eyes have gotten worse, but she's as energetic as ever."

"That's good!" Yona said happily. "Thank you all for taking care of us."

"It's our honor, Your Majesty! Please consider every person and every thing in the village to be at your service."

"So you have plenty of provisions to take in guests?" Yoon asked. "Because I'll warn you, this is a high-maintenance bunch."

As they discussed particulars, Hak listened in and looked back over his shoulder. Behind him, Shin-ah was getting flustered by the villagers' attention — probably they knew which dragon was likely to be wearing a mask — but then Zeno created a distraction, dodging around Shin-ah and playing at hiding behind him.

Before they even reached the village gates, Jae-ha had paired off with a young woman from among their escort, and the two of them spoke in confidential tones.

"You know," she was telling him, "in this village, it's common for those with dragon blood to take several wives."

"No, no, we mustn't speak of such things," he insisted softly. "I'll be gone with the first wind of spring, and who can say what may happen after that? If we ask only for beautiful memories, we'll be left with no regrets."

"Mm, 'beautiful memories'…" she echoed.

Kija ground his left hand into his brow and walked faster.

When they entered the village, a crowd had gathered to bow in greeting. Just as she had promised when Kija left, his 'Granny,' the village elder, was at the head of the assemblage, carried on her litter by her four smiling bearers. "Your Majesty, warriors of the four dragons, White Dragon Village is honored to welcome you," she said.

"Thank you for taking care of us," Yona replied, bowing in return.

"Lord White Dragon, come closer." She beckoned him until he nearly had to lean over her litter.

"Elder, it's good to see you again," he said.

She peered at him. "Ah, our Lord White Dragon is as beautiful as ever. I was afraid you'd have scarred your lovely face."

"No, the gods have been watching over me." He searched in his robe and took out a necklace with a rough stone pendant. "I've brought you a gift from my journeys: a charm for long life."

"As if I need you to worry about that!" Granny scolded, accepting the gift with both hands and a joyful smile. "You should be thinking about yourself and your master — all our hearts have been pounding when our people would come back with the stories! The time Her Majesty risked herself to infiltrate those slavers, the time the Fire Tribe rebelled and you all charged into the center of the battle, the time you were imprisoned and Her Majesty was all alone…!"

"So you've already heard about all of that," Kija surmised, blushing.

Hak leaned over in an aside to Zeno. "So, you were watching us, they've been watching us — how many stalkers do we have, anyway?"

"Then I suppose that you've already heard about my fellow dragon warriors," Kija continued, moving to present them anyway, starting with Shin-ah. "This is Shin-ah, the blue dragon."

Shin-ah tensed as Kija ushered him forward and the villagers bowed to him.

"I've heard how your village vanished, and you were found in the north of Fire Tribe country," Granny said. "It must have been very difficult for you. Please allow us to do our best while you're here."

Kija went on with the introductions: "Jae-ha, the green dragon."

"Ah, yes, you were the pirate," Granny recalled. "However did your people let you end up in a place like that?"

Yona was taken aback by the suddenly and painfully obvious gap in the villagers' intelligence-gathering. She saw Kija give a slight start, as well.

Jae-ha himself kept up a smile of humor, though perhaps not good humor. "They tried hard, but it's not so easy to keep a green dragon on the ground," he said.

"No, I'm sure it isn't."

Kija cleared his throat to break the awkward exchange. "And finally, I'd like you to meet Zeno, the yellow dragon."

Almost before Kija could prompt him, Zeno bounced right up to Granny and reached to shake her hand. "Pleased to meet you, Miss."

"Thank you, Lord Yellow Dragon," she said with a chuckle. "You seemed to pop up out of nowhere, but any dragon warrior who steps forward to protect our king has our gratitude."

"But Granny," Kija said, "there are things we've learned in our travels that you don't yet know. Zeno is in fact the first yellow dragon, the same who served the Red Dragon King."

Granny blinked. The villagers murmured and looked at each other. "Is this true?" the elder asked. "The legend says that the yellow dragon warrior was given a strong body…"

"Well, it's not really tough most of the time," Zeno admitted, pinching at his soft skin. "It can never die from anything, though."

"So, you're one of the founders? You've personally waited all this time?"

"Yes," he admitted. "That's right."

The murmurs swelled with wonder and the villagers fell raggedly into another bow. Granny even got a slight jostle as her bearers shifted in uncharacteristic surprise, but it didn't faze her. "Ahh! What a blessed day! The gods have been so generous to let us meet our king and see the dragon warriors united again, but to meet one of the founders — who would have thought it possible? Thank you all for putting your faith in us and bringing such joy to our village. This is everything we've hoped for and more!"

"And I particularly asked everyone to join us for the Ancestors' Festival," Kija pointed out. "I wanted the ones who came before us and made this possible to share in the blessing."

"Just like our Lord White Dragon," Granny said, wiping a tear from her eye. "But we mustn't wait for that — today is a day to celebrate!" She looked around at the crowd of villagers still on their knees. "Don't just sit there! Everyone, get to work!"

The villagers scattered into a flurry of gleeful activity.

* * *

By evening they had prepared a hasty but sumptuous feast.

The joyful atmosphere held until Kija picked up his chopsticks, looked down at his food — and suddenly froze. He stared at the roast pheasant with a sudden halt of suspicion, then carefully put his chopsticks down again.

"Lord White Dragon, is something wrong?" a woman asked as she waited on their table.

"No, no, I'm just… I'm not hungry. I'm still tired from the journey, but I…"

"Oh! Here, some tea will help to refresh you." She offered him a cup.

"I'm… ah… not thirsty either…"

"That's a shame; the tea is very good," Zeno said, sitting right beside him. "At least if it's like mine. Here, Zeno will switch with you!"

Kija accepted the cup from him and drank with obvious relief. "Thank you. Ah, it is good…"

Zeno had heard about the 'White Dragon Scale' incident and easily guessed what the problem was. His own power kept him safe from drugs, even love potions, but he could tell when he'd swallowed them — making him a uniquely qualified poison-taster. He reached over and plucked a pickle from Kija's plate.

Further to the side, Jae-ha was just close enough to hear as a few more of the serving women clustered together and watched.

"They're so familiar with each other," one of them marvelled.

"Lord White Dragon drinking from someone else's cup…"

Jae-ha smiled and sipped his own tea — not having managed to get anyone else's cup just yet. True enough, Kija probably would have found drinking after someone else disgusting when they first met, but also… He didn't hear any of the women say the words 'indirect kiss,' but very likely they were thinking of it — and if so, why not let them have their fun?

"Nice welcome, coming from people who just about killed us last time," Hak observed.

"Oh, we wouldn't have killed you," Granny insisted, "…necessarily. We couldn't have let you _leave_ of course."

Jae-ha set down his teacup, feeling a sudden loss of appetite.

"But you could have become members of the village. Such things are dealt with very carefully, but it has happened from time to time."

"And of course we would never harm the Red Dragon or their companions once we knew!" a mustached man added.

"Before we knew, Lord White Dragon was more flustered than anyone!" the elder laughed. "'How dare those outsiders come and disrupt our village! I'll destroy them!'"

"Really?" Yona asked, sitting on Kija's other side.

"Oh, yes! He's always so passionate about… well, _some_ of his duties."

"Please, Granny, there's really no need to speak of any of that," Kija muttered, blushing bright red.

"Don't worry, I understand," Yona told him.

She thought that if she'd been an ordinary exiled princess, the story could have ended far worse than with she and Hak landing here, safely hidden away and helping to protect the white dragon. But to think that that was how Kija had seen her — and why wouldn't he? If that had happened, even living in the same village with him she might never have gotten close to him at all, and the thought felt strange and cold. Her arrival had been an entirely new chapter in his life, also; she thought she knew what Kija was like as if he'd always been that way, but she knew far less than she'd assumed about who he'd been before they met.

The lively feast and talk continued. Yoon was looking all around and asking questions of an older man who was sitting beside him. Shin-ah eventually had enough of people wanting to see his eyes, picked up his plate and sat on the floor behind Kija and Zeno. The woman who'd walked with Jae-ha as they were coming into the village found him again and they exchanged smiles and soft words.

Finally some of the women carried away the remains of the food and brought out cups of persimmon punch to finish with something sweet. Yona savored the smell of the fruit and spices and swirled her cup until the floating pine nuts spun.

One woman ceremoniously presented Kija's cup to him — a bit too ceremoniously, Zeno noticed — then she looked at him intensely, and the elder had paused to watch… Kija had been lulled into a sense of security and nearly drank it, but Zeno plucked it out of his hand just in time and took a sip.

"Mm! Mm, there's something in this. Like a liquor maybe? — I think it's a little strong for White Dragon," he whispered, loud enough for those watching to hear. "It's very tasty, though!"

"Oh! Well, then, by all means!" Kija offered, catching the saving throw with a gracious gesture.

The woman and even the elder stared in restrained horror as Zeno drained the cup. He looked up at them, the woman's shoulders went stiff —

"Thank you for the food!" he said brightly. "Ahh, Zeno ate so much he wants to fall asleep!"

He leaned back against Shin-ah as the elder let out a sigh of relief and vexation.

* * *

The party was lodged in the white dragon's 'castle' — Kija's house, as Yona preferred to think of it. In fact he invited them all into his own room, which was spacious enough for everyone, larger than any inn room they'd stayed in and much larger than their tents. Zeno and Shin-ah gazed out the large, upper-storey window that looked eastward over the village.

"Are you certain, Lord White Dragon?" one of the housekeepers asked, when Kija told them to bring in beds for everyone. "We could easily find rooms for each of our guests."

"No, no. Of course the dragon warriors should stay together and near their master," he insisted.

"And I don't want to know what'll happen if I let them out of my sight," Yoon grumbled as he started unpacking their bags.

"First Zeno's a poison taster, now we're all bodyguards," Jae-ha observed. "Kija's shrewder than we thought."

"Wait, who are we guarding him from?" Hak asked.

"Oh, I understand some of the ladies here are rather —"

"You're not guarding me from anyone!" Kija insisted, but he was blushing.

"Kija, is this your bed?" Yona asked, lifting the draperies centered on the western wall to reveal the luxurious cushions and covers.

"Ah, for this winter, please consider it as yours, Princess."

"Oh, no, I couldn't…"

"Please, I insist."

Hak lay a hand on Kija's shoulder and leaned close enough for Yona not to hear. "Hey, White Snake, did you just…?"

" _Much_ shrewder than we thought," Jae-ha mused.

"It's only natural to offer my master the best place!"

"Pretty sure of yourself, too," Hak noted, with an acid smile.

Before Kija could decide whether to sputter in embarrassment or tear Hak to shreds, the elder entered, carried by her four smiling attendants.

"Are you all finding everything to your liking?" she asked.

"Yes, thank you," Yona told her.

"I understand that you all will be staying here together," the elder said. "If we may ask to borrow some of Lord White Dragon's time in the coming days, however, there are traditional duties here in the village for him to catch up on."

Jae-ha watched for a flinch, considering what some of those 'traditional duties' might be, but instead Kija's face opened up.

"That's right," he said. "Dal-bi would have had her baby by now. It went well I hope?"

"Oh, yes. A plump little boy, five months old now. Ra-hi might have another one before you leave, too."

"That would be her… fourth?" Kija shook his head, impressed. "In any case, the boy has waited long enough. I'll go tomorrow and give him the blessing."

"Oh, can I come?" Yona asked. After the realization at dinner, she wanted to see more of what Kija normally did here in his home village.

"Of course!" Kija agreed. "I'm sure the family would be most honored."

"Although, speaking of babies who've been waiting…" the elder said.

At that, Kija did flinch.

"Well, we'll speak about it later."

* * *

The next day, Yona and Hak did go out into the village with Kija and a small entourage, into a breeze that blew gently but hardened with cold and swirled a light drifting of snow. Winter came even earlier this high in the mountains. Yona looked up at the rooftops of the village, where a few flakes had begun to settle, and at the high, tasseled pole one of the men carried ahead of them as they went. She noticed villagers pausing in their work and turning to watch and bow to the procession.

"Is it always like this when you go out?" Yona asked Kija.

"Hm?" He had been looking straight ahead until she caught his attention, but now he looked around and smiled. "Princess, I don't think they're bowing to me."

It was true. The people looking had their eyes directly on her, much like when she'd first come to the village and the people had noticed her red hair. She had actually hoped they would calm down about it — if the whole winter was like this, it was going to get annoying.

When they arrived at the house, the parents were waiting. They inclined their heads to Kija, but when Yona entered behind him, the father immediately fell to his knees and bowed to the floor.

The mother would have done the same, but hesitated about what to do with the baby in her arms and only bent low from the waist. "Your Majesty, please excuse me if I don't show the proper respect, it's only…"

"It's okay, you don't have to bow to me," Yona said. She found herself drawn to the bundled child in the woman's arms. "May I see him?"

"Oh, yes! Of course!"

She couldn't help smiling at the little chubby face that turned toward her, the round blue eyes and wispy white hair and tiny grasping fingers. "Ahh! Can I hold him?"

"Yes, please! It would be an honor!" the woman said. Her husband was on his feet again, holding her shoulders and nodding.

Yona reached for the baby — and then froze.

The couple froze, and for a moment the three of them stood there in a sudden terror of awkwardness.

Hak laughed. "You've never taken care of a baby before, have you, Princess? It's written all over your face — 'How do I do this?' 'What if I break him?'"

"Of course I haven't taken care of a baby!" she snapped.

"Well, if you expect anyone to marry you, you'd better learn."

The couple stared in confusion. Yona was ready to come back at him, but before she could, he was saying "All right, put your hand here…"

Hak coached her quite skillfully on how to get her arms around the baby and support him, until she could lift him out of his mother's arms. Instantly the argument was forgotten as she gently rocked him and bounced him. "Ahh, he's so cute!"

"The Red Dragon King is holding our baby! She thinks he's cute! To think I would have lived to see this day!" the father exulted under his breath. The mother was fanning herself.

The baby, looking up and reaching out in fascination, caught hold of one of Yona's dangling earrings and started to pull —

"Oops." Before the child could do any damage, Hak caught hold of the tassel, drew it loose and out of the way.

Yona felt his fingers lift her hair and brush against her neck. She drew a breath despite herself, suddenly and intensely aware that Hak was touching her and she was holding a baby.

Hak cleared his throat. "By the way," he asked, and he pointed with his thumb, "is there a reason we brought this guy?"

Yona looked around and found Kija still waiting near the door. He avoided her eyes.

"Ah! Lord White Dragon!" the father cried.

"It's all right. It's only natural," Kija admitted. "If I may?"

"Yes, of course."

Kija came over to Yona and ceremoniously unwrapped his right hand. His white scales passed before her eyes, closer than she was used to seeing them, and he finally smiled as he lay his palm on the baby's head. When he spoke, he spoke not as if making a pronouncement, but softly and naturally:

"With this hand blessed by the dragon god, I bless you and welcome you. Do you feel its power? That power is also in you. The blood of the white dragon flows through you. As I was born to serve our king, you too have been born to protect this village, this blood, this power, this blessing. As the white dragon, I place my faith in you, and I thank you."

The baby burbled happily and grasped at Kija's scales.

When they had taken their leave and were walking back, Kija was still smiling, but Yona couldn't forget the clouded look on his face when she had seen him standing there forgotten.

"Kija, I'm sorry about that back there," she said. "I didn't mean for everyone to ignore you."

"Oh, that? Think nothing of it," he said, as brightly as if it had never bothered him in the slightest. "White dragons are honored of course, but everyone here is quite used to me. You and the other dragons' presence is a far rarer honor."

Yona was glad to see him in better spirits, but she couldn't bring herself to 'think nothing of it;' Kija deserved better than to spend the winter in her and the other dragons' shadow.

"It was so nice, what you said to the little boy," she pointed out.

"Well, those are the traditional words."

"Really? I thought maybe it was something like that, but the way you said it, it just felt like it was you talking."

"I did mean all of it," he said. "When I was young and was only reciting the words I'd been taught, I never felt satisfied. I suppose I have changed it a little, so that I can say it without any affectation."

"Yes, that seems just like you." Yona smiled, thinking that Kija had always been the Kija she knew after all.

* * *

As the party settled in over the coming days, everyone found something to occupy them. During the day, they scattered in various directions, coming back together for lunches in the village's communal hall and suppers at Kija's house.

Kija had more ceremonial blessings to perform, over the year's harvest and newly-born livestock and fresh building repairs. Yona didn't go with him again, not wanting to overshadow him, but occasionally she glimpsed the rituals as she passed along the village paths, and he always performed them with the same glad sincerity. He also had his traditional training, which always put him in high spirits. It was only when he went to speak privately with the elder about village matters that he came back looking exhausted.

Just as Kija had predicted, the village scribes monopolized Zeno's time, asking him questions and writing down as many stories of the "founders" as he could remember. He also told them about his more recent adventures with Yona and the others, including the incident earlier that year at Green Dragon Village. The story spread — rather to Jae-ha's chagrin — and the villagers, horrified by their counterparts' behavior, began hatching plans to send a delegation to the green dragons' tomb with fitting offerings for Shuten and his still-unsettled 'kids.'

Yona's party also had a scribe of their own. Yoon scribbled notes everywhere he went, like an explorer intent on describing the village customs. Mostly, though, he tailed the village doctors, who were only too happy to share their knowledge with someone who would use it to help Yona and the dragon warriors. Before long they even let him into the apothecary where the elder developed her special potions and medicines, and Yoon would come back fascinated, impressed, and occasionally horrified.

Shin-ah was discomfited by the showering of attention he got in the village and at first would take Ao and go off on his own, ranging around the mountain outside. Yona asked Hak to go with him — going herself or sending one of the other dragons would draw too much attention, but she didn't like to think of Shin-ah spending so much time alone. Before long they ran into some of the village sentries and were quickly accepted as fellows in the silent watches and patrols. In the days that followed, they kept going out with the same group until Shin-ah began to get comfortable with them, and when they would come back in the evening, Yona was happy to see him making new friends.

She was also happy when Hak declared his work done there and started coming with her to the village's martial arts school. Yona had yet to see a sword in the village; they relied primarily on bows for defense and trained with spears and bare hands in case of close-range combat, and they were happy to study Hak's spear techniques. He was so far beyond any of them that he seemed to be bullying them at times, but he gained a following that remained undaunted. Yona found that spears were surprisingly popular with women here, and after Hak's lessons they would crowd around him — rather like women had begun crowding around Jae-ha. It made her deeply uneasy and filled her with a strange, wild urge to take up the spear herself. Then one day as she was watching the scene, one of the village women turned from the cluster and looked at her; they caught each other's gazes, the woman's eyes went wide for some unknown reason, and she bowed before turning back to the others. Yona didn't really know what had happened, but for some reason she never saw the women crowd around Hak that way again, and her impulsive interest in learning the spear conveniently faded before she had to mention it to anyone.

Conveniently, because she had other things to do. Not only were many of the villagers expert archers but a few of them were expert archery teachers, and Yona threw herself into fresh lessons with zest. The stout, full-bearded master who took her under his wing was honored to be tutoring the reincarnation of the Red Dragon King but didn't make great play of it or give her special treatment. He did give her a new bow chosen to suit the length and strength of her arms, and he quickly honed in on repeated shots as an area for improvement; Yona's first arrow tended to be her best, and so she practiced maintaining her form and keeping up speed and accuracy. The master even taught her how to shoot two arrows at once, after he'd fully warned her about it — trading twice the arrows for half the range with no real chance of hitting two targets, it was only useful as an entertainer's trick, but Yona had passed as a traveling entertainer before and thus had an excuse to indulge her curiosity and learn it.

When the village held an archery tournament a week before the solstice, Yona only placed eighth but eagerly took the chance to ask the higher-placed finishers for advice. Hak, on the other hand, beat everyone except Yona's teacher.

Though not a competitor, Jae-ha was also given an opportunity to show off. On the one hand he had much less range with his throwing knives than the archers had with their bows, but on the other hand he measured himself by how many bull's-eyes he could hit in one throw. Usually at least one knife was a bit off-center; "Still not as good as my teacher," he sighed. Even so, several of the women in the audience squealed with delight.

For as chilly as Jae-ha had been on the notion of coming here, since they'd arrived he'd gathered a retinue of fascinated women, and both he and they appeared to enjoy each other immensely. Communal meals often saw him away in a corner sweet-talking someone, seldom the same person twice, and there were nights when he stayed somewhere other than in Kija's house with Yona and the others.

Even one of the housekeepers paid special attention to him, and as she helped bring their supper one evening, Kija noticed her looking around curiously.

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

"Oh, no, Milord," she said, blushing. "I just… I just wondered where Lord Green Dragon was."

"Who knows," Kija sighed with a long-suffering face, while Zeno reached over to sample his food.

Shin-ah tilted his head. "Should I look for—?"

"No no!" Kija clapped a hand over the blue dragon's eyes, for all the good it would do. "No, I'm sure that he and his… hosts… would prefer privacy."

"You don't seem too happy with our out-of-season butterfly," Hak pointed out.

Kija couldn't hide it, but… "I spoke to some of the women and was asked not to complain."

Yona didn't say anything. Somehow she wasn't perfectly comfortable with it herself, but it would be wrong to act like it was her business. It would make her the kind of master Jae-ha had never wanted to have and that she didn't want to be.

The vague discomfort was probably just the strangeness of everyone being apart so much, she thought. For months they'd traveled all together relying on each other, never long outside each other's reach of sight or hearing or even touch. Now, seeing the group scatter from morning until evening and come up one member short even at night felt suddenly lonely. She was happy that everyone was finding things to interest them and glad they'd decided to spend some time here, but she would also be glad when spring came and they set out again all banded together as one family.

 **Chapter 1 - END**


	2. The Ancestors' Festival

The very day after the archery tournament, the village began to prepare for the Ancestors' Festival. People began cooking food for the feast, and the village children crafted horses out of straw to help the ancestor spirits travel quickly. Yona learned how to make the horses herself, but the man looking after the children made Yoon stop after making only one. Everyone else had begun marveling at how real his looked and feeling ashamed of their own.

When the village came together for the midday meal, Granny's bearers rang a bell to get everyone's attention, and the old elder spoke up. "Thank you, everyone. I've lived in this village for a hundred years, and when I think of the people I've seen pass on ahead, it makes me happy to see everyone working so hard to welcome them."

The villagers gave a rumble of agreement that was even peppered with a few sobs.

"But even beyond the Ancestors' Festival, we have another joyous occasion to prepare for!" Granny announced. "At the dawn of the new year, our Lord White Dragon is finally getting married!"

Yona, sitting right beside Kija, was taken by surprise, and the shock felt that much deeper as a hush settled gently over the room — not a sudden silence, but the sound of feeling gone slack. Normally the villagers were so easily affected, especially by anything to do with the dragons, but now Yona saw someone literally shrug.

 _They should be happy for him!_ she thought — and that made her realize, _**I**_ _should be happy for him!_ She pushed through her own shock and took him by the arm. "Kija, congratulations! I didn't know you had someone back home you liked. You should have told me!"

He blushed and stammered. "I — er — no! — that is —"

The young woman in question came forward, smiling sweetly, and when she looked at Yona she got down on her knees and started to bow. "Your Majesty."

"Oh, don't do that!" Yona insisted. As she turned she saw Kija reaching forward as if to stop her, but she was determined. "I want us to be friends, if you and Kija are going to be getting —"

"WE'RE NOT GETTING MARRIED!" Kija burst out suddenly. He brought his hands down on the table with a loud _BAM!_ Dishes and teaware went flying —

— And crashed down on complete silence.

On the other side of the room, one of the village men elbowed another, who grumbled and handed over some money.

The young woman's sweet smile remained frozen in place even as tears started down her cheeks. Two other women took her by the shoulders and gently led her away. One of them whispered, "It's all right, we've been there…"

"I knew it might happen, but I didn't think it would be the fastest ever," she lamented quietly.

Jae-ha leaned forward. "That was a very unsightly way to break the news to a lady, Kija."

Granny reached over and patted Kija's hand. "We'll talk about this later," she said.

For his own part, Kija wilted face-down on the table. His knuckles curled, and his claws raised spiral shavings from the wood. " _Gods, please take me now…_ "

* * *

The commotion of Kija's brief engagement settled with barely a ripple, and everyone turned back to their preparations.

The day before the festival, the scribes brought Zeno in the long shadows of the afternoon to the communal hall, where the ceremony would be held. The room was already being arranged, with a large cluster of tables in the center to hold the feast and a cushion as large as a bed laid out before them, and people were busy arranging more tables and cushions in concentric circles.

Kija had recovered by then, and he was also there for full dress rehearsals under his Granny's fading but still watchful eyes. He wore a special wide-sleeved robe of coarse, stark white cloth, tied with a ribbon on his right breast and hanging unbelted to his ankles. The effect was ostentatiously plain, if such a thing was possible.

"At the ceremony, I must do my best to become… a blank sheet of paper, so to speak, to let the ancestors speak freely without interference from myself," he explained.

Zeno chuckled, smoothing Kija's paradoxically-fancy robe. "White Dragon is always White Dragon, though, no matter how you dress him," he said. "That's what it is about you that makes your ancestor spirits happiest."

Kija blushed.

"Lord Yellow Dragon," one of the scribes called. They were coming forward with some of the people in charge of the ceremony, who were carrying a large chest. "Please come and look at this."

"With so many of our traditions not fully matching your Lordship's memory, we almost dread to ask, and yet we must," Granny said.

The bearers put the chest down and unlocked it. The lid extended very near the bottom, and when the dome of it was lifted away, what remained was a large footed tray holding a cushion, and on the cushion rested a circle of jewels.

"This is the object we venerate as our founder's necklace," Granny explained. "We know it has power, but we hoped you might assure us — is it genuine?"

Zeno sank to his knees in front of it and stared. It was a string of beads in every color of jade punctuated with five white stones carved into hooked curves like claws or teeth. The sight of it brought the memories flooding back…

 _This really seems more like Abi's kind of thing_ , Guen had said.

And the king had answered, _I just imagined it on you and I thought it would look so handsome._

 _Well, if you say so…_

It had looked handsome on Guen's brawny chest, nestled against the fur of his collar, askew half the time as if his thoughts passed it over, not out of neglect but out of trust…

And now here it was as a revered artifact, arranged into a perfect symmetrical loop on its cushion and borne with the utmost care. Even the sequence and mottling of the colors rang true, as if the village had spent two thousand years not letting a single bead get out of place.

Zeno reached out to touch it.

"Begging your pardon, Lord Yellow Dragon," one of the bearers stopped him. "We have a rule that only the elder and the white dragon are to touch the founder's necklace."

"Oh, no one will complain!" Granny scolded.

"I was sure no one would," the man said, "but I thought it would be disrespectful to let his Lordship break the rule unknowingly."

"Go right ahead," Kija encouraged him.

But Zeno folded his hands in his lap. "It's okay. Zeno doesn't need to touch it. But it is the real thing. Red Dragon gave this to the first white dragon."

The villagers gave a collective sigh of relief and veneration.

For Zeno, the feeling was more bittersweet, but he smiled. They'd chased the rumor of another of the Red Dragon King's gifts only to find that it had already been destroyed, but this time, here was something out of his memories that really had been kept ever since back then.

He was glad he'd gotten to see it again.

* * *

When the day arrived, every other activity in the village was abandoned except for a light watch and the final flurry of preparation. The entire party was reunited, and the housekeepers fussed over them, asking if there was anything at all they wanted.

"Should I be wearing something special?" Yona asked, looking down at her dress. It was freshly washed but still scarred with all the mends from their journey.

The women waiting on her looked at each other, blinked, then looked back at her as they stood there wearing the same robes that everyone in the village wore every day.

"What do you mean, 'wearing something special'?" one of them asked curiously.

"We could bring you robes like ours, if you'd like."

"No, that's okay," she told them, she hoped graciously.

They'd been given a guide to lead them through the formalities, the same mustached man who had guided Yona and Hak the first time they'd come to the village. "When you're all ready, please follow me to the great hall. We ask that everyone be in their places before sunset."

"I'm so excited!" Kija gushed. "Now that the day is here, I can hardly believe this is happening."

"I'm happy to get to meet your ancestors," Yona said — although after the incident in Green Dragon Village, where the ghosts had been so hurt and angry that their 'king' hadn't come for them, she was also nervous. Even then, she could say she was glad to have met them, but, "I just hope they're happy to meet me."

"Of course they will be!" Kija insisted.

"I might not know what to say to them, though."

"It's very unlikely you'll actually see them and speak to them," their guide said. "Other than the white dragon, any spirits people encounter at the ceremony would tend to be people with whom they had close attachments."

"So, since we didn't know any of your ancestors here, we probably won't see anything," Yoon surmised.

"I wouldn't say that. Spirits have been known to travel from far and wide to attend our Ancestors' Festival. Members of the village who've traveled have felt the presence of friends they lost far away from here."

Yona perked up. "So, anyone we've lost, we might see them?"

"It's very possible."

Hak and Shin-ah stared, but Jae-ha crossed his arms and let slip a quiet "mph."

"Now, white dragons have been visited by their predecessors from centuries ago," their guide added, forging ahead. "Even then it's very rare for them to converse with the people in attendance, though. Usually the current white dragon will become momentarily possessed and deliver some sort of revelation. Although when our Lord White Dragon's father was young, he would often collapse in a trance and not wake until dawn."

"And this strikes everyone as a good idea?" Jae-ha questioned, massaging his brow.

"Oh, it's quite safe. This has been our tradition for over a thousand years and only one white dragon has ever been lost."

At that, Hak also raised an eyebrow. "That's supposed to be reassuring?"

Suddenly the whole party showed misgivings, and Kija stepped in to try to calm them. "Don't let that frighten you. It's a sad story, but a very strange case. This year is nothing like that. And of course, this year it's me, and I've never seen or heard anything," he added, with a self-deprecating smile. "There's no danger. I don't expect to do anything but let the ancestors enjoy the honor of everyone's presence."

"Well, then, time is growing short, if everyone is ready," their guide announced.

Shin-ah held back. He showed the others a hand to ask them to wait a moment, and he went to one of the housekeepers. "You said, anything we wanted?"

"Yes, of course. Is there something I can get for you?"

"Ah, do you have… little bells…?"

* * *

As they walked through the village to the main hall, the cloudy sky was darkening into the slate blue of the year's last and earliest dusk. Soft flakes of snow wafted downward through the air and dusted the winter-dry grass, and some of the housekeepers came along, solicitously holding umbrellas over Yona and the dragons to keep even the gentle snow off of them.

"Please, allow me." Jae-ha took the umbrella from one of them and got a blushing giggle as his hands touched hers — but his suave smile didn't hold, and as the description of the ritual continued, he walked along ever more grudgingly.

"You may find the tea bitter, but it's very invigorating. We wouldn't want to disrespect the ancestors by falling asleep during their visit," the mustached man was saying. "Once the dances and the invocation are concluded and the white dragon sits down to listen for the ancestors, we ask that everyone maintain silence as much as possible until dawn."

Zeno bumped Jae-ha's shoulder. "Cheer up, Green Dragon. It's a feast, so there'll be lots of good food, see?" He gestured to some of the other people converging on the great hall, who were carrying steaming dishes and bottles of wine.

"Well, at dawn," their guide corrected.

"Not until dawn?" Zeno asked.

"We ask very respectfully that everyone refrain until then. We wouldn't presume to eat before the ancestors or take back food we offered to them. Once they've had the traditional opportunity, we won't let what's left go to waste, of course."

"Of course," Jae-ha echoed. "Will you excuse me? I seem to have forgotten something."

He began to turn back, but Hak caught him by the ponytail. "Get back here, Droopy Eyes. Being quiet for one night won't kill you."

"If you'd like to see me speechless, there are better ways to go about it…"

The joke earned him another yank on his hair as Hak hauled him back into line. "White Snake brought us all this way to meet his ancestors; you can suffer through it with the rest of us."

When they saw the torchlights at the great hall, their guide finally finished his explanations. In the lull, Shin-ah tugged Kija's sleeve.

"What is it?"

"You said, the one time—"

Before Shin-ah could finish, he looked around at the sound of rushing footsteps behind them. One of the housekeepers had come running, dusted with snow, and caught up to Shin-ah to give him the little round silver bells he'd asked for.

"Oh, I remember," Yona noticed. "When I first met you in the cave, you had bells like that. Do they remind you of someone?" she asked gently.

Shin-ah wasn't ready to answer. By the time he tried turning to Kija with his interrupted question, a group of village women was coming out from the great hall to meet them.

"Welcome! Please, let us escort you inside." It was a middle-aged woman leading them, and two younger women helped usher the guests of honor into the entryway and took their cloaks.

"Lord White Dragon, the elder is waiting for you," the lead woman told Kija.

"Oh, of course. I…" He turned to take his leave of the others, but the emotion of the moment was more than he could take. He went around the group in a flutter, hugging each of them in turn — even Hak. "Thank you all! I'm so happy!" he cried. "I'll see you very soon." And with a final bow, he left.

"I'm glad we came just for that," Yona giggled.

"But, milords, before you enter for the ceremony…" The older woman gestured everyone to a seat on the rise in the floor, beside the stairs that led up to the level of the hall, then the delegation bowed to the floor with sudden formality. "To all of you — and I speak with greatest deference to Lord Blue Dragon and Lord Green Dragon — your presence is the greatest honor to us, but if you will forgive the presumption of making a request…"

"Anything you ladies would like to ask of me, I'd love to hear," Jae-ha said.

It was the older woman who tittered, but she delivered her message. "My lords, as you can well understand, we wish to create the best possible welcome for the ancestor spirits, and so we would prefer to avoid anything, however worthy, that they might misunderstand as distressing or offensive. If you would be so good, we humbly ask that your shoes and your, that is, headgear…"

Zeno had leaned over in front of Shin-ah to listen. "Oh, okay," he said, and he pulled off his headband with the dangling medallion and beads. "Zeno does need his medallion, though…" He tossed the cloth around his neck as a second scarf. "There!"

"Er, Lord Yellow Dragon, that wasn't…"

Shin-ah knew what they meant. He took off his boots first, then hesitated, but finally he took off his mask and set it aside.

When the delegation saw his face, they couldn't suppress their delight. "Ohh, the blue dragon's eyes!" one of the younger women breathed.

Those gold eyes widened, and then Shin-ah covered his face with his hands.

"Please forgive us! Thank you! Thank you, Lord Blue Dragon," the lead woman said as the delegation offered another bow.

When they rose again, they hesitantly looked at Jae-ha, who hadn't moved to comply but still sat with his legs crossed, practically displaying his boots.

"Well, I wouldn't want your ancestors to be the least bit displeased with any of you," he finally said, moving to rise. "I'll trust you to give them my regards."

"No!" the woman cried. "Lord Green Dragon, please don't misunderstand! Our ancestors have waited over a thousand years to meet you! It was only a suggestion, an abundance of caution, but such a small matter is surely as nothing compared with the honor of your presence!"

"Now, when you ask me like that, I can hardly refuse," he said, admitting failure in excusing himself from what promised to be an excruciating evening. Of course they'd sent women to ask; with a delegation of men he might have had some chance.

Well, maybe it wouldn't be as bad as he imagined.

* * *

The evening was worse than he had imagined.

Bells at sunset began the 'festivities,' with villagers chanting invitations to the ancestors and offering music and dancing in their honor. The music, however, was dirgelike — why anyone would assume that the dead liked depressing music, Jae-ha couldn't fathom. The so-called dancing was too stiff and slow to provide a distraction from the incense, an herbaceous smoke that slowly but relentlessly abraded the back of his throat. The only relief provided was the tea, which had been steeped to the point of chalky bitterness and was not what his nerves needed that night — and to endure it all while staring at a table of forbidden wine added a special twist to the cruelty.

Jae-ha kept looking around for Kija but didn't see him, or even an empty seat except the huge cushion in front of the feast table.

When the last stony trace of light had left the sky and the stars began to come out, more bells called the music to a halt. The dancers stopped and turned toward the skylight under the eastern eaves, raising hands to their brows in an unconvincing pantomime of surprise.

"'The sun of the year has set,'" one of them recited, once she was sure she had everyone's attention. "'Only the pale stars remain.'"

"'The light that gives life has left us,'" another continued. "'What are we to do as we stand at the edge of darkness?'"

"'At the edge of darkness and death,'" they all chorused, just to rub it in.

The dancers looked around at each other and at the crowd seated around them. Probably it was supposed to be a show of confusion and distress, but it was so poorly acted that it only conveyed 'we're supposed to look around at this point.'

The script didn't even make sense. _You already called the ghosts, don't pretend you're surprised now_ , Jae-ha thought sourly.

Suddenly Granny's voice boomed out over the hall: "' **We will have faith!** '" Finally, someone with some gusto for their role. "'The sun is the gift of the Red Dragon! We stand unafraid, assured of his return! Our life is the gift of the dragon gods! If this darkness brings us death, we accept their will with gratitude!'"

Jae-ha barely caught himself in time not to groan and cover his face. He tossed back a cup of tea, desperately trying to pretend that it was wine.

"'This night is a gift to us,'" Granny continued. "'Rather than beg for the light, with faith we will look into the darkness. We will remember our mortal fate. We will remember those who have gone before us, our honored ancestors whose lives also have given us life. We will treasure this night when the gods have brought us near to them — we will give thanks to them and open our hearts to receive their wisdom.'"

"'But who can hear the voices of the dead?'" the lead dancer asked. "'Who will dare to stand on the edge of the darkness?'"

"I will!" came Kija's voice from the back of the room.

Jae-ha turned to see him coming forward along an aisle between the onlookers' seats, and it was an unhappy surprise to see him dressed in an unfamiliar robe, stark white and unbelted — as if they were dressing him for the grave already.

The villagers bowed as one. "Lord White Dragon!" they called in chorus.

"'Lord White Dragon, you must not risk yourself,'" Granny insisted, clearly reciting but with a quaver in her voice.

"Do not dissuade me," Kija replied — of course sounding utterly sincere just when a bit of theatricality would have been welcome. "By the grace of heaven and our king, my power is here to serve our village. My walk in the light is brief —"

Jae-ha winced. _Please tell me we don't have to explain that line later._

"— But while it lasts, I walk with the blessing of the gods. They strengthen me, and I am not afraid."

The villagers made another bow of praise to "Lord White Dragon," and then people came forward in turn. The first woman presented the feast to him. The village children came to offer the straw horses they had made — which their parents probably enjoyed watching, at least. People came with additional offerings and particular praises and appeals to the ancestors — thanks for a new baby, begging protection for relatives who were traveling… Kija accepted every gift, answered every sentiment by saying "I will bear it in my heart."

When the last of the villagers sat down, Yona got up from her seat, and Kija gave a start — a small one, but enough to know that his princess had gone off script.

But she'd seen the example, and had a message of her own to deliver. "Please give my thanks to your ancestors for protecting this village. Because of them, you were able to help me when I needed help, and I was able to meet everyone." The whole room murmured with emotional sighs and quiet sobs.

For the first time, Kija bowed. "It will give me the greatest joy to convey your wishes to them," he said, then straightened again. "This is a joyous year, when all that our ancestors worked for has been realized. Our king has returned, and the warriors of the four dragons have again gathered." Clearly now he was back on script.

—A script he hadn't warned anyone about. Jae-ha was taken aback as Kija turned to him and approached him. "Green Dragon Jae-ha, I will bear your presence in my heart," he said, knelt, and bowed his head to the floor.

Before Jae-ha could puzzle out how or whether he was supposed to reply, Kija rose and moved on. He repeated the gesture for Shin-ah, then Zeno — at least he was keeping it simple and for once not piling on embarrassing sentimentality. Yona still stood, watching with a smile and no doubt waiting for a cue to decorously sit back down, and Kija passed her over momentarily and moved on to Hak and Yoon. As people who had aided and protected the 'king' and brought her to the village, they got honors, too. After Hak and Kija's typical squabbling, it was enjoyable to see Kija offer such praise — nothing elaborate, but so painfully sincere that Hak averted his eyes, practically squirming and probably biting back a joke to deflect it.

Finally, Kija returned to Yona and bowed at her feet. "My Master," he said, "it is my honor to bear your presence in my heart, and to share this blessing with our ancestors. We thank you for accepting our hospitality." He rose and gestured her back to her seat.

When the moment settled, it was Granny's line again. By this time, tears ran down her cheeks, but her voice was still strong and clear. "'Let us give our Lord White Dragon a sign to bear to the ancestors!'"

Some of the villagers entered in procession bearing a multicolored necklace of jade beads and white curved jewels on a cushion. "'This favor was granted to our founder, the first white dragon, by the Red Dragon King,'" one of the men said. "'It has been worn by every white dragon who has come before.'"

"'By this the ancestors shall know you as the one blessed by the gods, and by this sign we send you forth to them,'" Granny pronounced.

"This is a treasure of our village," Kija answered. "May the gods help me to bear it with honor."

Granny had the honor of placing it around his neck. She had to be lifted up on her litter right behind his head, and she looked a bit comical reaching over Kija's shoulders with her small arms to feel that it was straight and the curved jewels were all in place. When she was satisfied, her bearers carried her back to her seat.

Kija was left standing alone in the center of the room. "Now let us have silence, that the ancestors may speak," he said. He stepped onto the cushion before the feast and sat down in the middle of it, closed his eyes, and fell silent.

Everyone fell still and silent, waiting to see or hear from the ancestors.

Well, almost everyone. Yoon was scribbling in his notebook, and a few of the women remained on duty keeping the tea hot and fresh, but the curtain had fallen, and the silence demanded silence.

 _No talking. No noise_ , it said. _Only ghosts exempt. For the rest of the year — now until dawn._ Shin-ah, sitting in the next seat, occasionally broke the rule by shaking the little bells he'd asked for, but their rustling silver music only added to the overall effect. Between their jingles, the only sounds were the crackling of the fireplaces, the sounds of people breathing or shifting slightly, and now and then a soft hiss of snow on the roof and walls when the wind hardened enough to make it heard.

For Jae-ha, the silence descended like a wall of isolation — since he certainly wasn't watching or listening for any ancestor spirits. He'd seen ghosts before from time to time and had had more than his fill of them in the incident with his own predecessors earlier that year. The idea of another visit held no appeal, and the blunt fact was that there was no one he hoped to see. Certainly no one from his own village — his resentment toward his predecessor, Garou, was tempered with something annoyingly complicated, but not enough to give the man who had held him back for years and occasionally beaten him another opportunity. He had lost some fellow pirates in Awa and would have liked them to know how things had turned out there, but he preferred to imagine them at the harbor enjoying the offering boats and the fireworks; he didn't want to drag them to a place like this.

And so, perhaps ironically for someone who'd occasionally seen strange things since childhood, he was left behind in the physical reality of the room while everyone else seemed to drift away.

Well, someone had to stay behind and watch over things, Jae-ha thought, settling in with his eyes on Kija's meditative posture and soft, beatific smile.

Just like the white dragon to march happily to 'the edge of darkness and death.'

 _What an annoying family…_

* * *

Hak folded his hands in his lap and arranged himself. He'd gotten enough lessons from old Mundok — and enough bops on the head for falling asleep — that he knew how to meditate or at least fake it. He surreptitiously checked under his eyelids now and then, looking at Kija. Strange case or not, another white dragon had died doing this, and while Hak could agree to show respect for the ritual, he still didn't trust it. Only when he noticed Jae-ha openly watching like a hawk did he let himself relax and his mind move on to other things.

 _Listening for wisdom from the dead, huh?_ And they'd been told that spirits could come from every corner of the kingdom. Maybe even from Red Dragon Castle, even from the royal tombs…

 _You're here, aren't you? No matter what people said about you, I know you're not really the type to chicken out._ There was a time when Hak would have asked his king, 'Is this what you wanted?' 'What am I supposed to do?' Now that the chance was supposedly here, he found he didn't need to, but that didn't mean there was nothing to ask.

 _What was going through that bubble head of yours?_ Was it true what Soo-won had said? Had King Il really killed his brother — and if so, why? Was that the reason he had been so set against Yona marrying Soo-won — or had he seen something in his nephew all along that Hak hadn't? If he had seen it coming, why had he just let it happen?

Why had he made certain Yona never touched a weapon? Was it his principles, his fatherly protectiveness, or was there something more to it?

 _You let her get thrown out into the world not knowing anything!_

Hak clenched his jaw; the thought had struck a bitter well of anger. It even reminded of the time in Shisen, when the sight of Soo-won there in front of him had set off an uncontrollable torrent of rage. This was a much smaller current, but from the same stream.

And why not? If loyalty meant a blind eye or a blind heart, it wasn't worth having. Hak wouldn't betray his king, even if the entire kingdom already had, but…

He looked under his eyelids again, at Yona sitting beside him. Her red curls framed her cheeks; her eyes rested softly closed and her mouth in a supple curve just hinting of a smile. A blush rested on the tip of her nose, where the fireplaces around the room didn't quite beat away the chill of winter from the air.

Hak's heart pounded — and it drove the anger in deeper.

 _Come on, show yourself! Say something!_

* * *

Zeno composed himself for the vigil, smiling and unworried.

The ghosts clinging to Kija were in a predictably good humor; the incense had stirred them up, but the praise and offerings pleased and soothed them and the necklace fascinated them. Now they rested happily around their feast and clustered around Kija's shoulders. Just a few of them benignly wandered the room.

Even those few had the good sense to give Jae-ha some space — enough space that it kept them from touching Shin-ah either, probably a good thing. And Kija remained oblivious and untainted as ever.

With nothing to worry about there, it was just an Ancestors' Festival like Zeno had seen hundreds of times before, although this one wasn't the way he tended to remember them.

When Zeno had first heard Kija describe the ceremony, it had sounded very much like the Ancestors' Festival as it had been celebrated in his own youth. He and the other dragons had even spent the festival with Guen's tribe once, and without admitting it to himself, he'd begun expecting to see that memory re-enacted, perfectly preserved. The image had begun to crack when he saw Kija dressed to rehearse his role in that stark white robe — in Guen's day, the medium had been a wild-haired old woman who wore a bird skull around her neck — but only tonight had the expectation fully broken apart.

As Zeno thought back over the ceremonious dancing and sipped his tea in the attentive silence, the contrast brought the old memory back perhaps better than a re-enactment could have. Back then, the idea had been to lure the ancestor spirits with merriment. The dance had been boisterous chaos with onlookers encouraged to call out and sing, and food and wine had gone around freely. Abi had looked even more put-upon then than Jae-ha was looking now.

Guen's people had been seen as a backward rural tribe with rough, quaint customs. Zeno remembered how it had been a step forward in the four dragons' understanding of each other to visit there and find a variety of people, clever or careless, quiet or forward, just like anywhere else. They did live up to their general reputation for being open and direct — apparently some things didn't change — but in fact no one else as straightforward and stubborn as Guen. It had made the others quietly acknowledge him as more than an exhibit of his tribe's reputation, a unique and self-willed man. It was after that that Abi started butting heads with him — for all the good it did — but it was better than passing over every crosswise thing he did as the inscrutable ways of some noble savage.

Perhaps ironically, it was Abi Zeno found himself reminded of most. Abi had also been a priest, but had come from a place where that meant very different things than it did for Zeno: the largest temple in the largest, most sophisticated and splendid city on the peninsula at that time. Rather than listening for the voice of the gods, he'd been taught to read their will in the stars, in people's names and the lines of their palms, and it was there that he'd learned the mix of sensitivity and confidence that had, in his better days, kept him constantly butting heads with people.

But then, if Zeno could look back and call any place from their time a vision of the future, it would surely have been Abi's city. Thinking on it, he saw echoes all around. Even this generation of dragons — gradually he'd learned to see the youngsters as themselves, not as shadows of his old friends, but still he could say that Kija and Jae-ha were each like their respective 'founder' crossed with Abi, each one sensitive and fastidious in their own way; maybe he'd tell Shuten that sometime if he wanted to tease him. If anyone was in danger of being taken for an inscrutable savage now, it was Abi's own successor, but even with Shin-ah Zeno could see it peeking through.

Kija wore it most openly, and he hadn't come into it all on his own. The roughness and simplicity of Guen's people was still here, but now the village performed their duty and their ritual more in what would have been the temple style, with practiced words and scrupulous rules.

Zeno gave a quiet, wistful sigh. It had been a long time since he thought much about the way things had been in those early days, and much of it had faded. Often the only answers he could give to the scribes' questions had been 'I don't remember,' or 'maybe it was something like that.' But sometimes — more often now — he would come across some reminder and be surprised at how vividly so much of it came back.

 _That's enough of a visit for me_ , he thought. It was as much as he expected. It turned out Shuten's spirit was still in this world, but he was probably busy with his 'kids' — who knew, maybe even Green Dragon Village honored them somehow on the solstice. And Zeno didn't expect anyone else to have waited two thousand years.

He caught himself in a mix of regret and relief. The people he most wanted to see, he also didn't want to see. It hurt that they would have gone on without him, but he also hoped that they had.

He was glad that they had. He could see ghosts anytime he encountered them, and he'd never seen the people — the person — who most stirred that mix of longing and dread.

 _What would Zeno have to say for himself, anyway?_ At least he could think it with a little twist of humor now.

It was enough just to spend this night with the living, and he settled himself to soak it all in — the heated breath of the fireplaces wafting through the chilly air, the sense of the other dragons' blood, the warmth of Yona sitting right beside him. Shin-ah's jingling bells were a mystery even to him — Zeno knew that he had carried bells for years, from around the time the last blue dragon had died, but he didn't know why, and in a way it was pleasant not to know and to just hear their innocent music. Even the occasional clink of a teacup made him smile. He knew all too well how fleeting these things were, but it was proof that, for now, everyone here was alive together.

Hours passed. Through his dragon blood, he could feel Shin-ah and Jae-ha struggling; considering what they'd each been through, it was no surprise if the ritual was hardest for them, but maybe that meant they needed their space more than anyone. Until they called on him or he felt something more, better to just let them be.

Gradually Zeno's mind released. He was still aware of the other dragons' presence, and of every small, sweet sound, but it all simply flowed through him.

And then, trailing after a jingle of Shin-ah's bells —

" _You could have told me."_

Zeno snapped back to himself with a gasp and opened his eyes. He looked around, but he didn't see anyone who might have spoken, flesh or spirit. The words had simply flitted across his mind, but they hadn't been his own thought; they'd been imposed as if by sound, but in no voice that he could catch hold of to identify. Now and then as he was falling asleep he would seem to hear snatches of nonsense in such a way. Maybe he had been falling asleep — but he'd clearly heard the bells…

Had someone been talking to him?

When he'd heard of the white dragon delivering revelations or remembered the shamans of his youth, he had thought that hearing a spirit would be a kind of controlled possession, or like how he remembered the voice of the gods — a seizing, irresistible impulse — but could it be more like this?

His heart sank at the thought — _'You could have told me;'_ there were far too many people who might want to say that to him. Without recognizing a voice…

It was no use worrying about it. He tried to tell himself that, but he knew he couldn't escape so easily. That snatch of words nagged at him — especially because the words were all he had. There was no telling who might have spoken, if it was anyone but himself, or if they had spoken in sadness, or anger…

More hours went by, and gradually the sounds and sensations of the room could reach his heart again. Still he couldn't let go of wondering entirely, but he was able to loosen his grip on it until, with just a light touch holding him to the worry and the question, he could begin to float on the sense of the other dragon's blood and the scent of the incense and the crackling of the fires…

Beyond his eyelids, across the room, someone coughed, and then came a slurping of tea. It sent such a turbulent wave through the stream of stillness that Zeno almost laughed at the jostling. He did break into a smile —

" _It wasn't that I wanted you to die."_

Zeno gasped. His eyes sprang open, and his hands flew to his mouth — suddenly he could hardly breathe.

This time, he had caught it. He'd let go enough to let the voice flow over him, but still been just watchful enough to hear it fully — again, words spoken in no voice, but this time the feeling behind them was as clear as a cool splash of water:

A smile of affection. It could almost have been _'It wasn't that I wanted you to die, Silly.'_

It was enough to know.

She had said _'Let's meet again above the sky,'_ and it had tormented him ever since. _'I can't go to that place. I can't meet you again there.'_

But now, over a thousand years later, Kaya was here — how could she be here? Why would she come this far? But she was here to meet him, even if all they could do was touch each other for one fleeting moment — because if he had to relax and let go to hear her voice, he already knew that he couldn't do it again before dawn.

One fleeting moment, and she had used it with just an honest smile, no pretense of heroics or wisdom. She had touched the place where he held that pain — _'Let this go; you know I didn't mean for you to keep this.'_

 _I knew you didn't. I always knew, but by myself, somehow I…_ Somehow, even if he knew, he could never make himself believe it. There was no need to ask, 'Why would you come this far for me?' — she wasn't the one he needed to hear an answer from.

He was too agitated to hear her again, but he hoped that somehow she could hear him. _I'm sorry_ — sorry he hadn't told her the truth, sorry he hadn't trusted her. _I'm so happy you came. I'm so happy I got to hear your voice, even just a little…_

Zeno tried to stay quiet, but he shuddered with silent sobs and wiped his tears with his sleeve.

* * *

Jae-ha could only stare at Kija and watch nothing happen for so long before the restless, isolated boredom overtook him again, and then it had hour after hour to sink its teeth in. He didn't know why he'd bothered worrying; judging from every previous encounter, Kija wouldn't notice a ghost if it bit him.

As Jae-ha looked around at the crowd he sat alone in, he found that not quite everyone else was lost in the ritual. Yoon had long since run out of notes to scribble and folded his arms on the table, and now he was resting his head on them, apparently fast asleep.

Jae-ha could only envy that solution. For him at least, it wasn't a slack sort of boredom, but one full of tension and pressure. Perhaps there actually was something supernatural in the room causing it, but more likely it was the always-hateful feeling of confinement, being chained down by social expectation so that he couldn't speak or move or do anything that would make a sound. Even when the pressure had reached a point where he was tempted to flout convention and brush off this ridiculous ritual, he looked over at the others — Hak's face was clenched with determination; Yona wore a rapt, warm smile and had lain a hand on Zeno, who was actually crying — and Jae-ha couldn't bring himself to disrupt the experience for them.

Under the table, he practiced quietly flicking his knives out of his cuffs, and eventually, moved by the tension, he paused with one of them in his hand, curled his finger so that the second joint rested on the knife-tip, then slowly and deliberately curled it tighter. The pain when it came cut through the stifling nervous energy, and he let it build, testing the edge of how firmly he could press without drawing blood…

Shin-ah silently lay a hand over his to stop him.

Jae-ha tucked the knife back into his sleeve and turned to look, but Shin-ah hadn't otherwise moved; he still just sat with his eyes closed — but then, he could see with his eyes closed and see through the table. He shook his little bells again, as though nothing but the seance was happening.

But Jae-ha decided it was interesting in itself to have Shin-ah sitting there with his mask off, offering a rare opportunity for a long, leisurely look at his face in the state where he appeared most powerful but also most vulnerable. Of course Shin-ah could see himself being stared at; _Well_ , Jae-ha thought, _if he doesn't like it, he'll hide behind his hands or make a face at me and then I'll stop._ He didn't do either, and so Jae-ha just sat looking at him. His mouth had fallen into the small gaping expression that looked so familiar below his mask, but it looked half-strange combined with the markings around his eyes and his thin brows and short, fluffy hair; his face tightened and his mouth drew shut before Jae-ha could fully reconcile the image.

Jae-ha looked at him for a long time but finally let his attention wander to gazing idly at Kija again. _I hope you realize what I go through for you._

A few minutes later, Shin-ah drew a sharp breath, and his next breaths after it were audible but shallow. His bells didn't ring but made tiny muted clicking sounds. Jae-ha looked and saw that he finally had raised his hands to cover his eyes, and that he'd begun to rock slightly back and forth. It didn't look like someone communing with their ancestors, at least no ancestors they ought to be talking to; it just looked like someone reaching the limit of what they could take.

Jae-ha leaned closer to him and whispered very softly, "Hey." He trusted Shin-ah to see his hand before it touched his shoulder, see the gesture of _let's get out of here_.

He did see it, and he nodded. They both got up and very quietly left the room, Shin-ah tucking his bells away inside his fur-trimmed robe.

* * *

Kija sat hour after hour in the traditional posture with his hands resting in his lap, the dragon claw cupping his human hand. Despite the happy excitement that kept him safely away from sleep, he was still able to take slow, relaxed breaths, but the proper meditative state eluded him.

Of course, he had never fully succeeded at this; he'd never seen a spirit at the Ancestors' Festival or been able to convey their words. Not when he was a child hoping for a word from his father, not in the years since when he'd hoped for any word to give to his people as he should. Granny had told him that he mustn't try at it, that he must simply let what happened that night happen — his own father had snored during his nightlong 'trances,' she had confessed with an indulgent smile — but Kija couldn't bring himself to follow that example, and the festival he'd spent trying not to try had only been more vexing.

And this year, how could he not try? After two thousand years, the Red Dragon King and all four Dragon Warriors were here. How could he not want to show the ancestor spirits — _The ones we waited for, the ones you lived to meet are here for you at last!_ But that very desire filled his mind and kept him from being the open channel he was supposed to be.

Trying to put it out of his mind would be both futile and disrespectful, so instead he tried to embrace it and focus on the others' presence — the sense of Shin-ah and Zeno and Jae-ha's blood near him, the knowledge that the princess was sitting there. On their journey, that sense and that knowledge had become a familiar comfort as well as honor and blessing, but now it only reminded him of the momentousness of the occasion, of how magnanimous the others had been to come here for his sake.

As the hours wore on, the other dragons' presence distracted him still further as he felt their energy change — Shin-ah's especially tightened and strained, but the effect on Jae-ha was also enough to be concerning. They had both been concerned even at hearing the ritual described, and yet they had let him bring them here, even after what they had been through so recently at the hands of their own ancestor spirits. Perhaps he had been reckless and impatient, and his fellow dragon warriors were suffering for it.

When Kija felt Jae-ha and Shin-ah rise from their seats and walk away, his heart sank, and his face burned with sickly fire. He watched them go feeling both guilty and abandoned. He had asked too much — but they knew how important this was to him, what an honor to the village and the ancestors, couldn't they bear with it for one night? In any case, the perfect thing he had tried to do was in shambles…

Suddenly, Kija heard a tiny, sharp _tik!_ and felt a tiny, sharp, fleeting pain, like a fingernail flicked against the nape of his neck just under one of the beads of the necklace, and it brought him back to himself.

 _The ancestors are chiding me for my self-pity, I suppose_ , he thought, and he smiled that at last they had been able to tell him something. Shaken out of his misery, he knew better than to blame Jae-ha or Shin-ah. Surely they had done the best they could — indeed they could each see the other struggling as easily as Kija could, and it was even a blessing that neither of them had left the other to suffer or let the other go alone. They did know how important this was and had been so generous thus far; they would return if they could, he thought.

The perfect thing he had tried to do was still in shambles, but if there was anything he should have learned from the others by now, it was that his perfect things were never as perfect as he thought they were. At every step, there had really been pain and struggle, longing and misunderstanding, bugs and weeds, and even through all of it, it was such a profound blessing that he had been chosen for.

 _Perhaps this is the way this night should be_ , he thought. He lay his claw on the founder's necklace and held it to his chest — it would be too disrespectful to let it dangle and drag — and bracing his left hand on the cushion, he bowed low with a silent prayer.

 _Honored ancestors, if our hearts are too full to receive you, please forgive us. It is only through your devotion that we have been so blessed. If I cannot convey your wishes properly, please at least accept my deepest thanks._

With that, he straightened himself and settled to a seat again. For the first time, it felt simply natural: whatever happened for the rest of the night would happen.

 **Chapter 2 - END**


	3. The Visit

In the entry hall, Jae-ha passed Shin-ah his boots and cloak, and he hastily wrapped his own cloak around himself, intending to make a getaway before anyone could remind him what an unparalleled honor his presence was. Surprisingly, Shin-ah left his mask where it was, but he never opened his eyes, and when they stepped outside, Jae-ha had to fight the impression that he was leading a blind man.

The moon was nearing full, and an opalescent aura hung around it in the black sky. The breeze was slight but bracingly cold, its scent frosty and pure; after the cloying air at the ceremony, breathing this stung blissfully. Feathery flakes of snow, larger than earlier, meandered downward making less than no sound, dimming the crunch of fallen snow under their boots. Shin-ah's breath was still a bit fast, but it was puffs of mist that revealed it now, not sound.

"Are you all right?" Jae-ha asked him.

He nodded. His voice, always soft, was tiny but clear in the falling snow. "There was… someone I wanted to see," he said. "I didn't see anyone. I didn't see… anything… but what I saw was too much…"

"Yes, the atmosphere in there was quite something," Jae-ha agreed sourly.

"Is that, ah…" Shin-ah hesitated. "Why did you try to cut yourself?"

"I didn't." Jae-ha knew his knives well and was certain he wouldn't have actually drawn blood. Although with hours still left in that seance, he supposed he might have been that desperate by the end.

Shin-ah didn't seem fully satisfied by that answer, but he didn't press.

They walked along in silence for a while before he spoke again, hesitantly. "I don't know why he didn't come. Maybe he didn't want to."

"Or maybe there's nothing to it," Jae-ha supposed.

But Shin-ah shook his head emphatically, raising his hands to his eyes again.

If it was all real, then Jae-ha thought he'd had even more of a lucky escape. The brisk night air was already clearing his senses enough to know that he shouldn't leave Shin-ah alone with whatever was rattling around in his head. "So, who was this?" he made himself ask.

"The old blue dragon. I don't remember him very well, but… He taught me never to use my eyes. He taught me to use a sword to protect the village. I remember he would get angry when I cried, and sometimes he would grab me and pull me. He told me not to go outside, because there wasn't anyone who would be my friend…"

"And you want to see this person again?"

"Mm." Shin-ah nodded. Why was it so much easier to remember the harsh things? "He would let me hold his hand, too, or stay warm with him at night… He said if I had bells like that, he could find me…"

"If it were me, I'd toss them off a cliff and say 'good riddance,'" Jae-ha told him. "A few little crumbs aren't worth putting up with someone like that."

After he'd spoken, the sound of crunching snow dropped off, and he realized that he was only hearing his own footsteps. He turned to look — Shin-ah stood still, eyes squeezed tight shut, mouth twisting over a crumpled chin; he pulled a ragged breath.

 _Augh!_ Jae-ha managed not to let the internal cry of shock escape his mouth, and he hurried back to take Shin-ah by the shoulders. "Now, now, don't listen to me. What do I know about it?"

Shin-ah sniffled and rubbed his eyes.

"Just picking out a few things — that could make anyone look bad. I opened my mouth like an idiot, all right? He could have been a perfect father for all I know."

"You think so?" Shin-ah asked.

"Well, I know there can be more to these things than it seems." Even as he desperately retreated, Jae-ha wasn't willing to cede the ground completely; hearing about someone being rough with Shin-ah as a child and telling him no one would be his friend struck a spark of anger that Jae-ha would pledge loyalty to, but he also knew where he'd gone wrong.

He coaxed Shin-ah back into motion and started aimlessly down the path again. "Learn from your big brother," he said; "this is the sort of mess you make when you assume that other people are like you."

The spark of protectiveness had been there, but he'd also let himself react as if Shin-ah were talking about Garou — which was not only foolish but hypocritical. He _did_ know that there could be more to words and actions than it seemed. After all, in his own youth, _'I trust you'_ had sometimes looked like a knife thrown at him. Once, after he'd needed a rescue from the other pirates, the most touching _'I love you'_ he'd ever gotten had sounded like _'You stupid brat I should throw you over the side and let you swim back home'_ …

Jae-ha didn't trust himself to open his mouth again, but he kept watching Shin-ah, and was relieved to see him relax into a more calm, thoughtful look, eyes still closed, brow still lowered but more gently.

"More than it seems…" Shin-ah reflected. That was all he said.

For some time, they walked along in silence, shoulder to shoulder. When Jae-ha finally thought to look around, he found himself lost. Focusing on Shin-ah, he hadn't paid any attention to where they were going and had ended up in a part of the village that might have been barely familiar in daylight but was now altered by darkness and snow.

"Oh, this isn't where we're staying," he said. He could get his bearings quickly enough with a jump, just enough to see from above…

But before he could suggest it, Shin-ah spoke. "I saw something earlier, and I was curious. No one's there now."

"Ah, capitalizing on the distraction. I like the way you think." Far from leading a blind man, it turned out Jae-ha was the one being led.

The reversal became even more extreme as they came to one of the larger buildings and went inside, where there was no fire and no lamplight — pitch darkness. Now Jae-ha really was blind, and he let Shin-ah lead him along. _Well, after that, he can run me into a wall if he likes._

But he didn't. Shin-ah brought him through rooms and eased him through doorways and finally guided him to kneel down and put his hand on something soft.

"Cushion," Shin-ah told him.

Jae-ha sat down on it by feel, and then there was nothing for him to do in the dark but wait. A moment later, a strike and flash of flint made him recoil — so Shin-ah did have a little revenge, or else just didn't know that sudden light would hurt a normal person's eyes. Jae-ha squeezed his eyes shut until the red flashes stabilized into lamplight, then he blinked and peered through the lingering colored spots.

The room they were in was a study. He was sitting in front of a writing desk, aimed away from it at a blindly-chosen angle, and he was facing a wall completely lined with diamond-shaped wooden niches holding scrolls. Shin-ah had finally opened his eyes and was scanning over the collection.

"Ah, this is what you were curious about. I didn't know you were such a scholar," Jae-ha remarked. And maybe he wanted to embarrass himself just a bit more in payment for embarrassing himself earlier: "Myself, I couldn't read until I was thirteen."

Shin-ah blinked at him. "Why not?"

"No one bothered to teach me."

It got him a strangely quizzical look. "Before they taught you, you couldn't see it?"

"Well, I could see that there was paper with ink on it…" He trailed off as he caught the shape of the disconnect. "Are you saying you didn't have to learn? You can see what writing means just by looking at it?"

Shin-ah nodded, then turned back to the niches. "This one," he muttered, and plucked the thin scroll he wanted, based on no outward label that Jae-ha could see.

"You really can see just by looking, can't you?" Jae-ha went over to the scrolls himself and touched one at random. "What's this one about?"

Shin-ah looked at it. "It tells about the life of the thirty-ninth white dragon." He paused for a moment. "Nothing much happened."

Jae-ha touched another scroll, slid it out a few inches. "What about this one?"

"The twenty-eighth white dragon. Bandits came, and he fought and killed them all, but he was wounded in the battle and then he couldn't have children…"

Jae-ha sucked in his breath and slid the scroll back into place.

"…And then the next white dragon was born, and they said that it was his child, that the mother was a virgin and it was a miracle, but it wasn't really, and the scroll says what really happened but that it's supposed to be a secret…"

"All right, then! Turns out the white dragon ancestors are more colorful than I thought." And this talent of Shin-ah's was an interesting and unexpected twist as well, one that suggested some possibilities.

Shin-ah was unrolling the scroll he'd picked when Jae-ha put an arm around his shoulder. "Listen, let's have a little conspiracy, you and I."

Shin-ah leaned away from him a little, with an understandable twist of his eyebrows.

"Nothing questionable, just hear me out. Next year, let's winter over somewhere _else_. Are you with me so far?"

Shin-ah tilted his head. "I thought you were having fun."

"Ah, hah," Jae-ha half-laughed, struck by the unexpected counter. "Well, I've been trying to make the most of it. It's actually been quite annoying at times — saying 'jealousy is so ugly,' or 'good things come to those who wait'… Not that I would paint them all with that brush, but…" He sighed. "This is a rather troublesome place. It's not as terrible as I expected, and sometimes I even find myself thinking, 'yes, I see how Kija came from these people' — but then I'll come up against something that's just intolerable…

"Of course, it's so different from Awa, you know," he added, with sudden intentional brightness. "There, quite a few of the ladies already know what an unreliable scoundrel I am —"

"No, you're not," Shin-ah argued, sudden and calm.

Jae-ha stopped short, again taken by surprise, but this time he smiled. "So, you're saying I might be someone worth conspiring with after all?"

Shin-ah balked a little, but he'd played right into Jae-ha's hand.

"If this question comes up next year, I'm going to suggest Awa, and I want you on my side," Jae-ha continued, pressing the advantage. "Winters are milder by the sea for one thing, and I'd say the food is better —"

"But, so many people," Shin-ah pointed out.

"Now, now, a city can be a very good place to hide — especially if you have someone with you who knows the town like I do, and especially when so many people there owe you favors.

"Another advantage is that with a few months in town, we could make some money. There are various things I could do, and finding a job for Yoon should be easy enough. Kija might be hopeless, and Hak and Yona dear should probably stay out of sight — maybe if she dyed her hair, although that would be a shame… But at any rate, I think I could find something for you."

Shin-ah pointed to himself incredulously.

"Why not? If none of my other ideas work out, you're sure to be the world's best beachcomber."

"Beach… comb…?"

"Finding valuable things that wash up from the sea. Shells, goods from shipwrecks… Walk along the beach and look for pretty things, essentially."

Shin-ah considered it, with a finger to his chin — another expression that looked half-strange without his mask. Jae-ha judged that he'd put enough wind behind the idea to strike the sails and let it coast in on its own. "Well, you have most of a year to think about it."

After a little more thought, Shin-ah turned back to the scroll he'd taken down.

"What's this one about?" Jae-ha asked. He squinted at it himself, but between the archaic script and the weak light, it was opaque to him.

"I was curious about the one who died," Shin-ah said.

"The one time, eh?"

Shin-ah began to read from the scroll. "'The fifty-second white dragon gave birth to a son who had the divine power in his right hand, and so the fifty-third white dragon succeeded his mother. He grew healthy and strong until his fifth year. Then in the winter of that year, the divine power passed fully into him, and his mother fell ill and died.

"'Not four weeks had passed since her death when the Ancestors' Festival came on the longest night, the eve of the days between the years. The feast was laid, the incense was burned, and the founder's necklace was placed upon the lord white dragon. When the moon rose high, his mother's spirit moved and spoke through him, telling of her final wishes and her love for her husbands and all her children. But as dawn approached, the son still in the bitterness of his grief would not re-take his place in preference to his mother, though all present could hear her pleading with him. Neither would the mother usurp her son's place from him, so that when the dawn came, neither spirit assumed the seat of the body, and when the rays of the sun fell upon the young lord, both spirits remained in the world of the dead. Thus the fifty-third white dragon breathed his last.'"

"That's depressing," Jae-ha said, stating the obvious.

Shin-ah kept reading. "'Then the village elder said, "This tragedy should stand as a warning to us all that we must not place our personal attachments above our sacred duty. And yet who can fault the young lord for such filial devotion? It is for us as keepers of the tradition to guard against such a calamity in the future." And so a new rule was made, that on the longest night of the year the founder's necklace should be worn by the oldest living person who had held the title of lord white dragon, and that in a year when such a person had died, or when no such person was living who had reached their ninth year, the necklace should be worn by no one but should be placed upon a cushion in a seat of honor and propitiated with incense and offerings and prayers for the departed.'

"That's all," Shin-ah said at last.

"Well, at least the response was sensible," Jae-ha observed.

Silence fell as Shin-ah rewound the scroll and returned it to its place.

Jae-ha settled himself on the cushion again, carefully arranging his cloak to both present a smooth line and offer some warmth in the unheated room. He glanced at the papers on the desk where he was sitting; they at least were in a modern script that he could read…

"Maybe that's why," Shin-ah said.

"Hm?"

"Maybe that's why he didn't come. That time, if the mother had thought that something might happen, she wouldn't have… I don't think it's like that, but maybe, a little… Maybe he wanted me to…"

"Wanted you to live your own life without his meddling?" Jae-ha surmised.

Shin-ah nodded.

"That could be it." Privately, Jae-ha found it infuriatingly tragic, watching his little brother try to wring a sense of love out of literally nothing, but he'd learned his lesson. Whatever Shin-ah was finding in that nothing, even if it was tragic, it would be stupidly cruel to try to take it away from him.

Jae-ha turned again to the papers on the desk and began to read one. It concerned preparations for the Ancestors' Festival with all of the four dragon warriors and the princess — it was a record of that very day. What was on the desk were preparatory notes for when the scribes would file a scroll about Kija. The books stacked there must be whole volumes about him, and there atop the stack, an easy, wide-open target, was a collection labeled _Marriage_.

 _I shouldn't_ , Jae-ha told himself — but even as it was spoken silently, it was still done for show, a sop to a non-existent audience. He already knew that he couldn't help himself. The book was already in his hands.

* * *

As Kija sat in quiet acceptance, he gradually noticed the space around him seeming to widen. He had felt that at the ritual in years before — the other villagers and even the feast table seeming to drift far, far away. But this time, he felt it as an unfurling, revealing new dimensions. It was as though the world were written on paper, and part of it had been twisted off from the rest — not severed but separated. Kija felt as though he were sitting just at the twist, and now the twist was loosened, expanded, the separation eased.

He gradually noticed a presence reaching toward him from the other side, along some channel that the loosening had opened. His heart quickened. He was seized with the impulse to reach back toward that presence, but he remembered — _Just let it happen. It's enough to have them so near. If they are to find their way across, I must be their anchor._

So he remained still, accepting, even as the presence grew nearer and nearer. It touched him. More and more clearly, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He drew breath as he recognized the touch of a dragon claw like his own. One of his predecessors had come. The warmth of another body drew close behind him. He felt it all as though another person were there in the flesh, but it was not his flesh that felt it. The anticipation and the paradox dizzied him…

* * *

Yona heard a _flump_ that snapped her out of her pleasant reverie, and she opened her eyes. Kija had fallen backward and lay flat on his cushion.

"Kija!" She started up. Hak was also halfway to his feet.

"Please don't worry," Granny assured them. "In this ritual such things are quite common."

Yona settled back into her seat, still uneasy.

"Did he fall asleep?" Hak wondered.

Yoon lifted his head from the table and blinked blearily.

Zeno wiped his face with his sleeve and peered at Kija. "No," he said. "Something's happening."

* * *

The feeling resolved, and Kija opened his eyes. The room, the feast, the others, even the weight of the beads on his neck seemed far away, not along an ordinary length of space, but along that twisting channel. It took special attention and effort to see and feel the physical world.

But he couldn't help feeling the dragon claw leaning weight on his shoulder, a hand taking his other arm. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a man with a shock of white hair leaning forward and squinting at him. He heard their voice…

"Hyun-soo?"

"No," he replied, inclining his head. "My name is Kija."

"Oh, sorry. I thought you were one of my kids."

It was so surprisingly ordinary that it almost made him chuckle, but as the spirit released him, Kija feared that he might have squandered the moment of contact. "In a manner of speaking, I am one of your children," he said, turned on his knees and bowed. "Honored ancestor, White Dragon Village welcomes you."

As he raised his head, the spirit's dragon claw seized his and snatched it up from the ground.

For a moment, the spirit stared at it in silence, and for the first time, Kija had a good look at who it was that had reached him. It was a big man, more muscular than even Hak and surely taller when standing. His white hair was not close-cropped but somewhat short and wild, and he wore a fur tunic that angled down from one shoulder — with such unfamiliar clothes, his time must have been long, long ago. He regarded Kija's claw with lowered brows and a rugged face, but still Kija thought he had kind eyes.

"Why do you have the white dragon's claw?" the man asked.

"I am blessed to be among your successors," Kija told him.

"Successor…?"

The man's brows drew up over those kind eyes, not in anger but in confusion.

Kija puzzled at this for a moment, then gasped — here was a person from long, long ago, and if the idea of a successor confused him, perhaps it was that he hadn't _been_ a successor. According to the story that had been passed down, the founder had never seen his successor, either — there had been no scribes in the beginning, but the first scribes had written what was said of him, that his power never waned until the moment of his death, that the village mourned and prayed for days before the second white dragon was born. What other white dragon wouldn't know…?

"Could it be," Kija asked, "that you are the one who received the sacred blood from the dragon god?"

"…Yes? Who did you think—?"

" _ **Aaah!**_ " Kija couldn't contain himself and let out such a cry of delight that he gave the founder's spirit a start. He didn't know where to begin but let the words tumble out. "It's such an honor to meet you! I never imagined — but no, no, I mustn't! The whole village is waiting for a word from you — everyone is waiting —"

Their two dragon claws were still together, his hand in the founder's, but now Kija tightened his grip and rose. "Please, this way." He turned toward that other side of the world, the physical world, ushering the founder ahead. "Our master is waiting."

"What!? The king?"

"Yes, a new incarnation of the Red Dragon has finally come."

Suddenly there was no need to coax the founder's spirit forward. "That's right," he realized. "I felt… But Blue and Green, where did they go?"

"Don't worry, we will send for them. I'm sure they'll be delighted to meet you — they won't have gone far…"

* * *

As Jae-ha sat reading, occasionally putting the book down to breathe some warmth back into his fingers, he could feel Shin-ah moving around in the darkness behind him. The blue dragon's blood came closer again, and he turned over his shoulder —

To find a cloth-draped spectre looming over him in the lamplight. Softly, it asked him "Are you cold?"

"Ah — a little," he admitted. The book dropped from his hand with a papery crash.

Thankfully his mind connected the voice and presence before the apparition descended and enveloped him. Shin-ah curled up against his back and tucked the fringes of the borrowed blanket or tapestry around him to catch as much shared warmth as possible.

"Tell people when you're doing these things!"

"Didn't I?" Shin-ah asked.

Jae-ha let it go with a sigh.

He picked the book up again but only straightened it and put it back down. The story of Kija's first ill-fated engagement had been amusing; the seventh was frustrating and tiresome. So if his granny leaned on him enough about his 'duty,' she could wring a 'yes' out of him, but when things got too serious, he would bolt, only making a bigger mess. Then Granny would start pushing again, but the more she pushed Kija the more nervous he became about it all, so the cycle continued — and apparently, no matter how many times the pattern repeated itself, no one involved learned anything from it. No wonder the village had greeted the latest episode of the drama with a collective shrug.

Still, there was no distraction on offer here except the books — since Jae-ha still had no desire to go back to the ceremony and now was further pinned down by his role as Shin-ah's warm cushion. His eye fell on a row of volumes lined up between carved bookends at the back of the desk, and he idly selected the first of the series — may as well start at the beginning.

He riffled through the pages and had nearly reached the front cover when some of the words caught his eye and he paused to read.

 _April 8th_

 _A full day. Seeming safety, but continuing care. Judgment._

 _The bleeding has stopped. The wounds still seep clear plasma, but not red blood. By the grace of the gods, the young lord has suffered no debility from severed muscles, and he has taken no infection. He has lost weight, but the dragons' matron assures me that some loss is normal in the first days of life and it is not yet cause for alarm._

 _At this point there seems to be no great danger to the young lord's life, but he still cries constantly and struggles about with the pain of his wounds. His hand must be kept thickly swathed to prevent injury to his mother and nurses; he has only a fraction of the dragon's strength as yet, but his claws are already very sharp. His distress also disturbs his feeding. The matron carefully gave him an herbal syrup to ease his pain and let him suckle and rest more comfortably._

 _She secretly added the same medicine to Lady Kiha's tea. Even afterward, the lady would scarcely let the young lord be taken from her arms and never from her sight. Her body is recovering well from the birth, but she remains understandably agitated — although she was somewhat calmed by the judgment about the former lord._

 _The dragons' matron met with the elder and the council, and they accepted her advice and instructed the scribes that the incident should be recorded thus: that the former lord white dragon had not sufficiently prepared himself for the birth of his successor, that when the divine power in him began to diminish, he left himself unguarded, and an evil spirit came over him and caused him to attack the young lord. Indeed this seems to me to be true, in one manner of speaking or another, and in this way the former lord need not be found guilty of intentionally wounding the white dragon. He declared himself willing even to face the penalty for that, but as the matron insisted and the council agreed, the young lord has suffered enough injury without being left fatherless. It was judged, however, that the former lord should never touch the young lord or enter his presence without guards; this would be in keeping with concern about an evil spirit, and the former lord's behavior cannot simply be tolerated without consequence._

 _(The elder asked that I make particular note of the matron's role and wise advice. I believe she intends the matron to succeed her soon, hopefully after the young lord no longer needs such constant care.)_

 _April 9th, morning_

 _As this was the third dawn of the young lord's life, he was named, according to tradition._

 _Due to the judgment, the former lord was not permitted to speak at the ceremony, but Lady Kiha chose a name which she said she and her husband had agreed upon before the birth, should the child be a boy._

 _The one hundred eighth white dragon's personal name is Kija._

Jae-ha paused there. He noticed that his fingers were aching with cold again, and he put the book down and tugged free a bit of Shin-ah's tapestry — he thought it was probably a tapestry — to wrap it around his hands and face.

It was one thing to have seen Kija's scars; it was another to have a window into the time when they were still fresh.

This was also his first glimpse of Kija's mother. He could admit that reading about her jealous protectiveness turned up a leftover scrap of resentment at the white dragon's seemingly-charmed life. But then, no one had introduced them to 'Lady Kiha' this winter, so Kija must have lost her somewhere along the way. Jae-ha had no idea what might have happened to the woman Garou had pointed out to him once, who had looked at him with pain in her eyes and then hurried away leaving only an image of long braided hair, but that didn't matter; the woman who had actually been a mother to him was still very much alive.

And as for fathers, Jae-ha keenly remembered that day at the hot springs, when Kija had said who gave him his scars. It was a shock to think that his father could have been killed for the crime — a shock but not a surprise; what else would this village do with someone who assaulted their holy dragon? But Kija had spoken of his injury without the slightest bitterness or shame, even with respect — _'Is there any reason I should be gloomy about it?'_ If it had come out when they first met, Jae-ha would never have believed it, but by then he'd been able to understand; Kija really did see the world that way, that he could accept such a thing as a gift of passion and not a curse. From there, it was easy to forget that he might ever have seen it differently.

But of course, as a baby, he had taken it the way a baby would, screaming and fussing over his own pain without a thought for motives or traditions. It stung to think of it, but somehow, more deeply, the image felt reassuring.

Kija was human after all.

And even White Dragon Village knew when to bend the rules.

The cloth suddenly jerked back against Jae-ha's face as Shin-ah straightened up.

"What is it now?"

"Back there. Something's happening." Shin-ah shuffled free, staring intently at a fixed point in space. His mouth widened silently for a moment, then — "It's not Kija."

There was no need to say 'we're going.' Jae-ha quickly blew out the lamp. Shin-ah had already taken hold of his hand.

* * *

Kija's right arm rose and folded, planted the dragon claw on the floor, and pushed his body up from the cushion — but it wasn't Kija. With just that one gesture, it was obvious to everyone; Kija wouldn't move like that. He wouldn't scrub his eyes with his left hand as this person did, wouldn't look around squinting, his mouth pulled off-center in a pensive quirk that showed one pointed tooth…

The villagers drew in their breath, staring in wonder and audibly silencing themselves to await the words of the visiting spirit.

He only looked back at them in confusion. As his gaze came around, Hak tensed to see such lack of recognition reflected at him from Kija's face.

But then he turned toward Yona.

His eyes went wide; his jaw went slack. He sprang to his feet and rushed over to fall on his knees in front of her table. "Your Majesty!" He looked her up and down. "This is—! How—?"

Zeno peered at him. He wiped his eyes again but it didn't wipe away what he thought he was seeing. He leaned closer. "White Dragon…?"

The visitor's eyes flicked toward him for only a second, still under Yona's spell — then suddenly he whipped around. "Zeno!?"

Before Zeno could say anything, he'd been seized with the dragon's claw. Teacups rang and spilled as he was pulled across the table into a powerful hug.

"Zeno, it's you! Where have you been!?"

Yona perked up. "This is your friend?"

"Yes, this is the first White Dragon."

A collective gasp rose from the crowd of villagers. Granny firmly gestured them to stay silent in deference to this most honored ancestor.

"Your Majesty, don't you recognize me?" he asked Yona.

"I'm sorry. People tell me I'm the Red Dragon King, but I don't remember any of it. I can feel it, though," she said smiling. She offered him her hand. "I'm glad to meet you. What's your name?"

He at last let go of Zeno to take her hand lightly in his claw and kiss her knuckles. "Guen, Your Majesty."

"What characters is it spelled with?" a voice burst out; the village scribe on duty couldn't contain herself.

"Huh?"

"Don't worry about it, don't worry about it;" Zeno waved it off. Guen's name, like his own, hadn't been written with ideographic characters — much to Abi's frustration when he tried to use them for a fate reading.

"I don't know what's going on," Guen admitted to Yona, shaking his head. "I don't know how you got like this, but as long as it's you…

"This guy, though!" He turned to Zeno again and took him by the cheeks. "You haven't changed a bit! It's like you're still a kid!"

"Oh, turns out that's part of my power."

"Mm, I'm even more jealous now," Guen said. "Your eyes are all red, are you okay?"

Zeno smiled, although he was almost ready to cry again. First the words from Kaya, now this. "It's… Zeno's just so happy."

"Why are you talking like that? If you're happy to see me, you could have come earlier. I told you and then you took so long — I thought I was going to die!"

Zeno froze.

Hak took a breath and covered his face with his hand.

"What's wrong?" Yoon whispered.

"Do you want to be the one to tell him?"

Yoon only blinked, confused by the whole scene. Even after the blue dragon's tomb and Green Dragon village, this was surreal, to see Kija acting quite normal and amiable but like an entirely different person.

"Guen—" Zeno began.

Before he could finish, the doors of the hall were flung open with a bang.

Guen turned. "Blue! Green!"

And then he stopped and puzzled at the sight of Shin-ah and Jae-ha entering the hall and threading their way forward between the tables.

"This is my friend Guen," Zeno announced, hoping to soothe their obvious alarm — but on the other side, nothing was going to soothe the truth; there was nothing to do but face it. "This is, ah… This is Shin-ah, and this is Jae-ha," he told Guen, pointing them out.

"But, I can feel it—"

"That's what I started to tell you. It's been a long time, White Dragon. Over a thousand years. Everyone has successors now. Well, everyone but me."

"Then, Abi and Shuten are…"

Zeno nodded solemnly.

Guen slumped, taking it in in silence. Yona came around the table and sat beside him with a hand on his shoulder; "I'm sorry…"

Shin-ah quietly edged around the central ring to Hak and Yoon. "Kija, he's…?"

"He's got to be in there somewhere," Hak whispered.

Shin-ah nodded; even keeping his eyes closed again, he could see that much.

"I knew that," Guen said at last. "I think I knew it. I could feel it, right when…" He shook his head as if to throw something off. "What am I doing? The dragons are all back together! Even if things have changed, this is… We have all this food here," he realized, "why isn't anyone eating?"

Granny at last broke the silence and bowed. "Honored founder," she said, bowing. "This is the Ancestors' Festival. No one would presume."

"It's… really?" He looked around. "This is a weird Ancestors' Festival."

"It's a lot different now," Zeno agreed.

The villagers looked at each other, quizzical and somewhat chagrined.

"But I'll take that as the honored ancestor's permission," Jae-ha announced, picking a bottle of wine from the feast table and pouring himself a cup.

Hak accepted the permission as well, took a bowl of oranges and slid them in front of Yoon. Yoon didn't even look, still staring at the scene in confusion and distress, but he started blindly peeling the fruit and seemed slightly less lost having something to do with his hands.

Guen approached Shin-ah and held out his hand. "What was your name again?"

Shin-ah shrank back and regarded the offered hand carefully, as if Guen were trying to coax a wary animal.

"Shin-ah, it's okay," Yona encouraged him.

Jae-ha nudged some dishes aside and sat on the feast table, crossing his legs. "True, I suppose there's no reason not to be friendly — so long as you give Kija back before dawn."

Guen blinked at him. "Give… who?"

Jae-ha and Hak turned on him with hard, cold stares. Zeno and Yona each had a softer jolt, but it was shock enough.

"White Dragon…" Zeno started.

Granny bowed. "Lord Founder, they speak of your current successor as white dragon. It is through him that you are able to be with us tonight."

"My what?" Only slowly did understanding dawn on his face. "That's right, before I woke up, I saw someone… 'Honored to be among your…'"

Suddenly he clapped his hand to his head and nearly collapsed, only catching himself on his claw. "'Everyone has successors now,'" he echoed dully. He stared at his left hand as if seeing Kija's smooth skin and delicately-sculpted muscles for the first time. "The Ancestors' Festival… And I'm 'the honored ancestor'…"

"I'm sorry;" Yona lay a hand on his shoulder. "I didn't realize you didn't know."

"Lord Founder, if there is anything that we can do to ease your regrets, you have only to say the word," Granny told him. "To meet you even for one night, surely this is a gift from the gods. White Dragon Village is at your service. Please."

"'White Dragon Village'…" Guen looked around at the sea of white-haired heads, white robes, and unfamiliar faces. "So that's is how it is. Everyone's gone — _I'm_ gone." He pulled an uneven smile that looked painfully out of place on Kija's face; it quivered, then faded completely and went slack. "I'm here for just one night, and then it's…" He turned his head as if turning toward someone, but his eyes grew dull and distant.

Zeno caught his breath. "No, wait—!"

Guen slumped onto a table and tumbled toward the floor.

Yona caught him. "Guen?" She patted his cheek. "Kija?" Still no response. "What happened?"

"I think Guen went to talk to White Dragon, maybe," Zeno said. What he didn't say was what an ominous feeling he had about it. With his memories of Guen flooding back, he knew them both well enough to imagine…

He hoped he was just worrying too much.

* * *

Kija watched the spirit wander back toward him from the physical world. "Lord Founder?"

"I have a name, you know," the great man said, rubbing his brow.

Kija understood that very well, and he bowed his head. "Of course, Lord Guen."

"You don't need the 'Lord.' I mean, I guess I won't complain if it makes you feel better." Guen dropped himself to a seat next to Kija. Even sitting flat on the seeming of ground while Kija sat on his knees, the older man was still taller. "So I'm an ancestor, huh? Even my kids are long gone, and you're some kind of grandkid's grandkid's grandkid, or however many it is…"

"According to our village's history, I am the one hundred eighth white dragon," Kija offered.

Guen puffed a breath out under his teeth, shaking his head. "Have they all been like you?"

"Not exactly." Kija wasn't quite sure what to make of the question. "But we have all devoted our lives to serving our king."

"That's good."

"Waiting so long, the other dragon villages lost their way, but—"

"Is that so?" Guen asked. "Well, looking at those other two, I can see that…"

Kija had let the remark slip through in a moment of pride, but hearing Guen agree struck an unexpected spark of grievance.

When its heat and glow faded, only awkward silence was left. Like when he had learned the truth about Zeno, this was a meeting he could only have dreamed of, and now that it came, he didn't know what to say. But unlike with Zeno, he couldn't take comfort in thinking, _We'll be together from now on; if there's anything that must be said, there will be time._

It was Guen who broke the silence. "I knew," he said. "Well, I guess I knew."

Kija straightened, listening for whatever knowledge was about to be imparted.

"The last time we were all together, I told the others, 'this blood makes us brothers; this will tie us together forever, even when we die.' That was what I thought. But toward the end I could feel it trying to slip away, like losing the blood of your family, and I tried to hold onto it…" He gave a sad, lopsided smile. "I think I held on until the rope broke. I remember I woke up in the night and felt my hand crumble and float away, and then there was just nothing… We were waiting for my first grandkid, and I didn't even get to…"

He trailed off. His smile fell, and his eyes widened. "Maybe I did. I remember seeing a hand, just a human hand, and I thought, 'Whose is this? Why is it stuck to me? Why does it move?' And then I saw my claw again but it was tiny, and it was in the wrong place, and it was… cute. But I didn't know what was happening. It didn't make any sense. Nothing was making any sense…"

So the founder had seen his successor after all, Kija realized. Another of the village's stories turned out to be less than truthful — but who would have wanted to teach their children that the founder was lost without his power and ended his life in a haze of confusion?

"All of my predecessors have faced such a bitter crossing," he reflected. "Unless it happens that I give my life in my master's service, my turn will come."

"'Crossing' isn't the word for it," Guen said. "Everything just… stopped. I could feel people calling — I couldn't see or hear it, just feel it somehow, and I thought 'that must be my kids, and I'm still here, that means it's not over…' Was that really a thousand years of Ancestors' Festivals, you all trying to call me back?" He shook his head. "When I felt everyone — the other dragons — I thought it was true, we were all together again, but then I felt them slipping away, like they were leaving me…

"Well, not Zeno. — But ugh, that guy! What did he think I was going to do? He could have told me." Another lopsided smile. "Although now I'm really jealous."

"I admit, I've envied his power on occasion." It was a thought Kija wasn't proud of, but…

"Right? To be there for everybody forever, no matter what — what would be bad about that?"

"It must have been hard to lose so many people," Kija said, still not proud to be thinking about it.

"It is hard," Guen agreed. "I lost my king, and a wife, and three kids. But it's worth staying. And to think, 'we'll meet again someday; when you come back, I'll be right here to meet you'…"

At that, Kija smiled, for once knowing what to say. "Lord Guen, you _are_ here."

Guen blinked at him, with a kind of innocent frankness that he had glimpsed in mirrors on occasion — and somehow those eyes looked just as fitting in the founder's rugged face. Finally he laughed. "That's right isn't it? This just isn't what I thought it would be like." He leaned back on his hands and looked into the distance.

Kija followed his gaze and looked with him at the physical world. Yona and Yoon were nudging and prodding at his unresponsive body as Hak and Jae-ha looked on. Granny was trying to reassure everyone, but Shin-ah still watched in some distress — Kija hadn't thought of leaving his little brother with the sight of a body vacated by the soul — and Zeno wore an uncharacteristic frown.

Guen drew a deep breath, let it out slowly… "I could still do it, you know."

Kija turned.

The founder grinned and met his eyes. "It's not like I thought it would be, but I can still feel it. I wouldn't let anything happen to them — well, everyone's human, but I'd give it all I've got." He flexed his claw. "I hate to brag, but back in the day not even Green could beat me."

Excitement surged in Kija's chest. It seemed to spin off balance, but he knew he couldn't back down. This encounter was an impossible gift — how could he turn away anything that it offered? To turn away would be wrong; it would be selfish. After all, "I can't abandon my duty, but… For the dragon's claw to protect our king with the greatest possible strength is what matters most."

Guen's brows lifted in surprise. His smile brightened. "That's right — you get it. But… Are you sure? You want to decide it between us?"

"That would be the right thing to do," Kija answered. The energy inside him flowed stronger, its whirl more dizzying, but surely the path was clear. He couldn't refuse a chance to test himself against the founder. All his life he'd known that he lived to give his all for his king — and that was the question being asked of him now: _'Are you willing to go this far?'_ In that light, he had to remind himself to accept Guen's hesitation as a courtesy and not an insult; to him, it wasn't a question at all.

Kija rose and bowed — to a worthy opponent. "Please, Lord Guen. Grant me this honor of this challenge."

Guen rose, and for the first time Kija fully faced him standing. The muscles of his shoulder were as large as Kija's head. "All right," he said, offering his right hand. "I give you my word: if I win, I'll fight for this princess and protect her with all my power."

"And I give you the same pledge," Kija said, accepting his grip.

Even in the thrill of the moment, he marveled at how their scales slid and caught against each other. He'd never been allowed to hold his father's hand, and he was lucky even to see Jae-ha's leg. It made him that much more certain: this night was a gift, this was the way it should be.

They released each other and stepped back. Guen took a guard stance; surprisingly, he faced Kija with the armor pauldron of his left shoulder and held his claw back. Surely he was giving it room to move the way he liked, but it left an opening behind his back where it would take him an instant longer to reach. Surely he knew it; surely he was ready to compensate, but it would be a place to begin, before the flow of battle took over — and, Kija realized, even the founder had never faced another white dragon's claw in battle before. That might be all he needed to press the advantage, if he didn't hold back. He was fighting a noble, immortal spirit, not a body that could be destroyed — there was no reason to hold back, and every reason to give it everything he had.

Kija charged forward, striking toward the back of Guen's shoulder with all his strength and will. His claw shot forward, huge and filled with power.

Surprisingly early, Guen spun away from him. When he came around, it didn't seem that they should be in reach of each other, but suddenly Kija's knuckles were sliding over a mass of scales that folded around him in a flicker of claws, entrapping his wrist before he could react.

In the next moment, his feet were torn from the ground. His right shoulder strained and crackled with pain as he was flung through the air — flung but not released, and his shoulder bore the full force of the whirl and tumble. If it had been his left arm — if it had been his _body_ — that arm would surely have been ripped away at the joint.

But even through the pain, his dragon strength held firm. Through the pain and dizziness he still felt his heels rake the ground and moved to get purchase and control.

Before he could catch his balance, his feet were kicked out from under him. In the same moment, the grip on his wrist released, sending his head and shoulders crashing to the ground. Instantly he rolled away —

— And was brought up short by scaled fingers against his face. The founder's claw was lightly clasping his head.

Kija froze, panting, his mind a blank. The moment stretched on so long that the founder settled his wrist, and Kija's neck irresistibly tilted along with it.

Then he knew. If this were his body, he could be dead in the blink of an eye, much too quickly to counter. In only a fraction of a second, the founder could easily crush his skull or snap his neck, or slash his throat with a flick of one finger…

Instead, the claw opened and lifted away. Guen's voice came down from behind Kija's head. "Do you want to try again?"

Kija found that he couldn't answer.

"Come on, let's just call that one bad luck. If you'd rolled the other way and gotten your claw down, you could have been gone before I caught you."

It took a moment for Kija to even understand; Guen was saying he could have pushed himself away, used his arm to move like Jae-ha used his leg. It only drove the point further home. Kija would never have thought to do such a thing, and would only have thrown himself further off balance if he'd tried.

The size of the claw, which he could only unleash with sheer passion — Guen had used it against him in perfect calm. The grip on his wrist too quick to parry, the clasp on his head seeming to appear from nowhere — when Kija tried to remember times he had grappled or thrown opponents, they all seemed clumsy and childish by comparison.

The question — which of them could use their power to be of greatest service — had been asked and answered.

The chance for further sparring was still a gift, but Kija couldn't pretend that his heart would be in it, not when he suddenly knew… The princess's smile, Jae-ha's reliability and tenderness glimmering from behind his teasing, Shin-ah's shy yet open face, Zeno's bright sunshine and mysterious shadow, even Yoon's scolding and Hak's insults… He'd seen it all for the last time. This quickly, it was over. Even his right hand felt weak.

Kija turned on his knees and bowed to Guen, with his head to the ground. "No," he said. "This is your victory. I will honor the promise we made."

"I've got to give it to you. You didn't underestimate me for a second, but you jumped right in and didn't flinch." Guen lay his claw on Kija's shoulder and gave a brisk but gentle rub. "I wasn't sure what to make of you at first, but you're really brave."

Strangely, the words didn't sink in. If someone had told Kija at sundown, 'the first white dragon will praise your courage,' he would have thought it an impossible dream, but now that it happened it only bounced off his heart. Had he really been so brave? He hadn't accepted the risk so much as brushed it away, irrelevant.

And it _was_ irrelevant. He straightened himself, eyes still downcast but mustering a smile. "I've always known that I would be happy to give my life for my master. I imagined that it would be on a battlefield. Surely this is far better, to be leaving everyone in good hands.

"But if I might ask a favor of you…"

"Of course. Anything."

"When you go back, if you could tell everyone —"

"Now hold up right there," Guen stopped him. "We still have until dawn. Anything you want to tell them, you can tell them yourself."

His heart leaped; it was true, he still had this one night…

This one night out of the year. "Next year and the years after, will you bring them back here for the Ancestors' Festival? Even if it's only one night a year, I would like to see them again."

Guen clasped his shoulder. "I'll drag them if I have to."

"Thank you."

A long moment passed in silence.

"Go on, everyone's waiting," Guen said. "You don't need to waste any more of tonight talking to me."

"No," Kija scrupulously protested. "It's been an honor."

The founder's gentle smile twisted strangely; perhaps he also knew that feeling of praise glancing off its target. "Just go."

This time Kija did rise and turn back toward the other side of the world, where everyone was waiting.

He could see Yona and the others still wearing looks of concern — but now they were all looking at Granny, who'd been brought closer on her litter and seemed to be offering reassuring explanations with a smile of pride. Indeed, Kija looked further and could see the villagers all around the room; even before he was close enough to hear them, he could see people flush with awe, exulting quietly to each other.

 _Yes_ , he thought. _You all taught me well._ This chance had never come before and would never come again, of course it had been right to embrace it with all he had. To give everything for the king without hesitation — that was what he lived for; that was the desire his predecessors had left to him. He would have been ashamed to do anything less in their presence tonight.

 _I should be proud_ , he thought.

 _I should be…_

 **Chapter 3 - END**


	4. Letting Go

Everyone darted to attention as Kija stirred — and it was Kija. Shin-ah could see it immediately and reached to help him up. Everyone could see it only a moment later, in the way he unthinkingly arranged himself and raised his head with ingenuous grace.

"Kija!" Yona cried.

"Lord White Dragon!" Granny was less distressed but no less affected. "What a night this has been! I always told you you could do it if you just stopped worrying so much. But to meet the founder and speak with him — who could have imagined? The time was too short but who could ask for more than this? You were able to speak to him, weren't you? It would be such a waste if you weren't, you must have had more to ask him than anyone."

Kija listened, occasionally venturing to open his mouth but only now finding an opening. "Yes, I was able to speak with him."

"Ahh! What did you talk about?"

What had they talked about, before what had happened? About the difficulty of letting go — but Kija didn't want to repeat that to everyone, and it was no good delaying the important news. "He and I made a promise with each other," he said, and he drew himself up straight to make his announcement. "After tonight, I will be entrusting my duties to him."

Granny blinked at him uncomprehendingly, but Yona heard Zeno pull a sudden hiss of breath, saw Jae-ha turn and stare in horror.

Hak started back. "What are you talking about?"

"I mean just what I say," Kija explained. "After tonight it will be Lord Guen who accompanies you as the white dragon."

"But then, what will happen to you?" Yona asked.

"I will stay behind… in the other world."

"But — but that's like saying you're going to die."

Kija breathed in deep and forced himself to meet her gaze. He couldn't remember anything more difficult that he'd ever had to do, but he would certainly be ashamed if he couldn't look his master in the eye and tell her the truth. "Yes, Princess," he said. "At dawn, I will die."

Where the sound of his voice reached, a crushing, nauseous silence followed, and it spread still further as villagers at the surrounding tables whispered to confused neighbors. Zeno buried his face in his hands. Yona and the others stared.

It was Yoon who broke the silence. "You're kidding, right? I mean, someone else taking over your body — that can't really happen, can it?"

Shin-ah curled inward, hugging himself. Jae-ha was cursing under his breath.

Granny burst into tears.

That pushed other villagers out of their paralyzed confusion. Some of the older men passed word, and people started picking up their children and filing out of the hall. The night had suddenly turned into something that shouldn't have an audience.

"Lord White Dragon!" the elder sobbed. "You've always been one to try too hard, but this—!"

"Granny, don't cry," Kija said, hands on her tiny, heaving shoulders. "Hasn't this been the desire of every white dragon, to give our all for our master?"

"'For'… " Yona echoed. "No! Kija, I don't want you to do this! Go back and talk to him again! Tell him—!" She came up short. What did she want Kija to go back and say? 'Stay dead, we don't want you'? The familiar comfort she'd felt at meeting Guen was too strong for even this to wipe it completely away, too strong to send a message like that. She deflated, letting words escape without thought. "Tell him… please… I don't want him to do this…"

Kija turned on his knees to face her. "I already made a promise. Would you ask me to break my word?"

"Listen, White Snake," Hak hissed, leaning into his shoulder. "Swallow your pride for once! You made another promise, too — 'I'm your dragon,' remember?"

"Yes, I did pledge my life," he said aloud, forgoing the aside. "Forgive me, Princess, but this is the way that life can best serve you. The founder and I both agreed that that was the most important thing, and he is… much stronger than me."

"I don't care! I don't care!" Yona shook her head, flinging tears.

Yoon took her by the shoulders and held her silently, still dumbfounded.

Zeno had sunk to a seat on one of the tables and began nodding along tragically. He understood all too well; both white dragons were stubborn and reckless enough in their scruples to agree to a contest, but it would have been no contest at all. It was the disaster that had begun to take shape in his mind just too late to head it off, and now those same stubborn scruples meant that it was probably too late to undo the damage.

"So you just found someone else to do it, eh?" Hak snarled. "After all your big talk, _you're_ the one who just let himself be bought off."

"Of course not!" Kija snapped, and the flush of anger stayed with him, unlike with Hak's usual needling. "After all this time, I thought you might understand my feelings as a dragon."

"What I understand is that you're an idiot."

"I'm with Hak," Jae-ha offered over his shoulder, with the music of a strained smile in his voice. "If you want to talk about 'feelings as a dragon,' I'm a dragon myself and I don't understand it."

"Of course, I know that your feelings are different than mine," Kija said, turning respectful again — then he gave a gentle, reminiscent laugh. "You're the one who once told me that I was terrible at using my power."

Jae-ha whipped around and stared for a moment, wide-eyed with shock, then he snatched Kija by the front of that stark white robe, hauled him up from the floor and punched him.

A gasp washed over the room as Kija went sprawling. Shin-ah sprang up to put himself between the two of them.

"Lord Green Dragon, please —!" Granny started.

Yona burst out, shouting over her. "Stop it! Everyone stop it!"

Kija picked himself up from the floor, rubbing his bruised cheek and probing at a loosened tooth. The sensation of it, the prosaic fact of it in his body, felt intensely real; it had been such a shock, there was so little time left for such things, and there was something about it that he couldn't quite grasp, the intensity of feeling that it had imparted to him… "That was something I never understood about you," he told Jae-ha, "but now… Somehow that does feel good."

Jae-ha opened his mouth once, twice, but in the end he turned away. His usually silvered tongue had no words for this.

"Why?" Yona lamented. "Why does it have to be like this?"

"Um, yeah, can't you two just share or something?" Yoon asked doubtfully.

"No. Sadly, no," Granny explained. "Such a thing has happened once before. When the two spirits couldn't choose amongst themselves, both were lost. To receive the founder's power, this can only be done through Lord White Dragon's sacrifice."

Jae-ha let out a bitter laugh but said nothing.

Shin-ah began to close up on himself again. Kija noticed and took him by the shoulder. "Shin-ah?"

He turned, his face downcast, his eyes still closed.

"Will you look at me?" Kija asked. "Please, show me your eyes one last time."

Zeno looked up at the uncomfortable echo. A sad scene from his past was replaying itself…

And this time it was even more tragic. Shin-ah didn't move for a moment, and then he shook his head.

Kija's face fell. "Shin-ah?"

"I'm afraid… what I might do," Shin-ah answered softly. "With this power, is there a way I could keep you here…?"

Kija drew him closer and hugged him. "Forgive me. Forgive your big brother." He looked also at Yona, who was still sobbing, supported by Hak and Yoon on either side. "This is my own fault. I could have spared you all this pain if I had only been stronger."

"No, don't blame yourself if you couldn't beat him," Zeno said. "Back in the Red Dragon King's time, there were constant wars where the strongest fighters survived and rose to the top, and even then, no one could beat Guen. His tribe said no one could beat him even before he had the dragon's claw.

"But White Dragon," he said, "you know you're going somewhere Zeno can't follow you."

"No, I don't think so." Kija reached to take Zeno's arm and pulled him into the hug as well. "I believe we will _all_ be together again someday. Doesn't tonight prove that no reunion is impossible?"

It moved Zeno to a sad smile. That was true, wonderfully true with the words he'd heard from Kaya, but now he felt a guilty wish that it had ended with that — and an equally guilty thrill of blessing to have one of his old friends back, not to be alone anymore, the only one with those memories. Even the joy of it twisted painfully inside him; it would be betraying a friend to push it away, but it would also be betraying a friend to embrace it.

He took a breath and wiped his face with his sleeve. "Tonight also proves that no matter how many times you lose someone, and no matter how much you know it'll happen someday, nothing ever makes you ready for it."

"Lord Yellow Dragon is right," Granny agreed. "I've already buried your father and the white dragon before him, but to lose you, the beautiful light of our village…" She fell to sobbing again.

Kija turned and reached toward her, but before he could speak, Yona seized him from behind and joined the embrace. "Kija, you idiot! When I asked for your power, it was because I didn't want to lose anyone else."

He tensed, his face washed with warmth as he felt her face, her tears against the back of his neck. Zeno and Shin-ah clung to him miserably; Jae-ha wouldn't even look at him. Hak's jaw was grinding, and Yoon was still holding his head in disbelief. Most of the villagers had left, deferring to such a personal tragedy, and the ones who remained were in tears. Even Granny's bearers had lost their perpetual smiles; one of them handed her a cloth to dry her lined cheeks.

Another perfect thing in shambles, he realized. He wasn't sure this had ever seemed perfect, but in that moment that seemed so long ago, when he had requested the honor of the contest, it must have.

Yona squeezed him tighter, and for the first time he felt a qualm of doubt that this was the right thing to do. "Princess," he said hesitantly. "It is true that I gave you my word first. Now and always I am your dragon. If you order me—"

The others looked at them hopefully, but Yona clutched him tighter and burst out louder. "Don't say it like you're a slave! If it's just because I told you to, not because you want it…"

Jae-ha turned away again with a sigh; it would have been worth it for this idiocy to stop, but he couldn't argue with Yona's answer.

At the same time, Shin-ah flinched with a gasp. Yona's words had thrown a spark down to the bottom of the black, gaping hole that had opened inside him, and suddenly he could see the shape of it. The story of his mother who had seen his eyes and killed herself, Old Ao exulting 'I can finally die!' — it had left a darkness inside him that whispered, _'People would rather die than stay with you,'_ and now it was whispering, _'You see? It's happening again.'_

He grasped Kija's arm, his voice soft with panic; "You don't want to go."

"Shin-ah…"

"Please say you don't want to."

Kija reached to find an answer in his own shaken resolve, and he did find one. "This is what I have to do."

"But if you didn't have to, if it could just be how you wanted…"

Kija understood the question at last, and he held Shin-ah close again. "If it were like that, of course I wouldn't. How could I want to leave my little brother? If it was only a matter of what I wanted, I would never leave you, or the princess — any of you. What I would want would be for us all to be together forever." His voice wavered, unexpectedly touched by his own words. Like the risk he'd taken, this was a truth he had known all along but passed over first as irrelevant and then as uncomfortable, and only now that Shin-ah made him put it into words did he truly face it. It was better to face it. It was better to say it, for everyone to know; the pain of it was sweet but deep and intense.

"But listen," he said. "I'm sorry to leave you without your big brother, but I know that your uncle will take good care of you. It's true — he's much stronger than I am. You are all sure to face many more dangers ahead, and a time might come when the princess or any of you might be hurt, when he could protect you and I couldn't. If such a thing were to happen even once, it's worth my sacrifice."

Shin-ah shook his head against Kija's shoulder.

Yona gripped fistfuls of his robe and pressed her face into his back. "Stupid. I want to protect you, too, you know — all of you."

But she said it too softly for most of the room to hear.

Instead, one of the village men had burst out bawling. "Lord White Dragon, why do you always have to be so noble!?"

"You're breaking all our hearts!" Granny cried. "But Lord White Dragon, if this is where your duty calls you, your devotion and courage fill us all with pride."

"We'll build you the most magnificent tomb," one of the men insisted.

"Your birthday will be a holiday forever," said another.

Kija was distracted for a moment by Jae-ha's joyless laughter, but he turned to Granny and the villagers with a smile of long-suffering nostalgia. "There's really no need for any of that," he told them, "but…"

There was one village tradition that had to be performed. While the white dragon had the duty of blessing the newly-born, it was considered a violation of their sanctity to bring them into the presence of the dying, so that duty fell elsewhere.

Kija gently disengaged himself from Yona and the others and bowed before Granny. "Elder, please, give me your blessing before I go."

Granny burst into tears again, fell on his lowered head and wept into his hair. "As if I would forget!" she scolded, but her voice was strained, and for some time she just held him.

The other villagers who were left came and lay their hands on him; the lower elders, Granny's bearers — even the scribe who had stayed put down her brush. Kija felt Shin-ah and Zeno come close, too, and touch him. He couldn't see it when Yona and Hak and Yoon joined in, but he knew that the hands beside the other dragons' were theirs; he had faith that they would all be there for him, and they were — except Jae-ha, who still held himself apart. Even that, Kija knew, wasn't out of unkindness; he had known that this wouldn't be easy, but he hadn't anticipated any of them taking it hard in quite that way.

Granny finally composed herself enough to sit up and lay her hands decorously on his head, but she recited the traditional blessing with uncharacteristic softness, choking on the words until they could hardly be understood.

 _She must have done this for Father_ , Kija realized. Sometime before that morning when he'd climbed into his father's room and found him lying there alone, such proper things must already have been done.

And now his own turn had come. When Granny finished her blessing and lowered her hands, when the other villagers took their hands away, it all seemed deeply real, in a way that it hadn't until that moment. This was the end. Now that he was at the crossing himself, 'bitter' hardly seemed like the right word; he felt light, cool yet feverish. Every sensation felt vivid — the sounds of everyone's breath, the slight sigh of snow on the roof, the crackling of the fireplaces and the mingling of warmth and chill they threaded through the air… Shin-ah didn't let go but lifted him up from the floor, and he saw the sky through the high-set window; already the infinite blackness of midnight was turning opaque with the promise of dawn. Perhaps another hour or two…

Yona clung to him again, and he felt locks of her hair curl against his ear and his neck. He turned toward her and saw Hak's hand on her shoulder; his heart plunged for a moment, but he thought that leaving her with Hak — the one who'd protected her from the start, the one she turned to so much — surely that was better…

"Lord White Dragon," the scribe spoke up. "If there are any words you would wish to leave us with…"

Kija didn't have any great wisdom in mind, but silence wouldn't do, and he trusted the words to come as he opened his mouth. "I—"

His voice betrayed him. The sound would barely emerge. Every vivid sensation outside himself had distracted him from the pressure of emotion building inside, and now he found that it took great strength and care to speak without losing control.

"I have been… so blessed," he said. "Blessed to be born in this village… Blessed to meet my master and my brothers, all of you—"

He had to stop there and rein his voice in again. He found himself wishing that this could have happened somewhere along their journey, deep in a forest. There, he thought, in front of Yona and the others, he would have simply let himself go, but here in front of the village, how could he show them their Lord White Dragon behaving that way? How could that be his leave-taking? But whether he wanted it or not, he realized he couldn't hold it back for long.

Slowly, he stood and took a few steps away from everyone to give himself space.

"Kija?" Yona called after him.

He turned and risked a look back at everyone — even Jae-ha had turned to look at him — before he lowered his eyes. "What I feel for all of you… is more than I can possibly express," he said carefully. "The best I can do is to let these be my last words."

"What?"

"But—"

He heard the tangle of everyone's voices, confused, objecting, as he knelt and bowed one last time, head to the floor. This time he let the necklace fall, and the beads made a restrained pattering on the floor mat.

"To all of you, I am so…"

Unintended words rose in his mind, the urge to say _'I am so sorry.'_ He had to take a deep breath and press forward with the words he had chosen.

"I am so… very grateful."

"Kija…"

"But it's not dawn yet —"

"What do you mean 'last words'?"

He heard them starting to move, and one set of rapid footsteps. Jae-ha finally rushed to his side and seized his shoulder. "Now, listen—"

But it was too late to talk. Kija braced himself on his claw and reached to take Jae-ha's hand; it wasn't enough, but it was what he could do…

"Kija, you've taken this far enough!" Jae-ha hissed.

Kija gripped his hand tighter and managed a strained whisper. "Forgive me."

Then he turned away, back toward the other world.

His hand fell away. His shoulder slipped from Jae-ha's fingers. His body, still bowing, settled and at last slumped over to lie curled on one side, hands tangled in front of the face.

Shin-ah covered his eyes with his hands.

Yona screamed. " _Kija!_ "

* * *

Guen was waiting on the other side. Kija arrived there stumbling, blinded with tears, and out of the nothingness surrounding him, he felt the founder's arms enfold him, that other dragon claw embrace him.

He let himself give in to it, let himself be held against Guen's chest and cry against the fur of his tunic. There was nothing else to do. There was nowhere else to turn now, but he felt something in his heart clench, more trapped than comforted. The founder surely meant to be gentle, but Kija could still feel his inescapable strength, and he had to push down a small, perverse voice in his mind crying _'let me go!'_ That would be too ingracious, too disrespectful…

In mastering it, he was able to get himself under control and quiet down, but he still tensed when the founder ruffled his hair.

"What did I tell you?" Guen said. "So brave."

Again, the praise didn't sink in. This time Kija knew for certain — it wasn't true. Staying behind and collapsing in tears might have been undignified, but it would certainly not have been cowardly. Looking back with a twinge of regret, Kija didn't think he'd taken the brave course at all.

"Forgive me," he said, unsure who he was saying it to.

"Maybe I should be the one saying that," Guen admitted. "This is hard on you, no shame in admitting it. But to do what's best for the king, even when it's this hard… It makes me proud."

That did give him a little reassurance. This was the right thing — if it could save the princess and the others from any danger or injury, it was worth the sacrifice. At least someone else understood him in that.

"This is going to be hard for everyone," Guen observed.

Kija followed his gaze back toward the village hall, like looking into an unsettling dream. He could see himself curled on the floor, swathed in his plain white ritual robe. Yona clung to him, screaming _"Kija, wake up! Open your eyes!"_ as Hak held her shoulders. Zeno and Shin-ah clung to each other, rocking back and forth. Jae-ha beside him and Yoon not far away each sat silent and frozen with shock. Granny and the villagers were all in tears.

"I don't think they'll all be happy to see me," Guen said.

"The village is happy, you'll just have to give them time," Kija replied. The founder's return was a miracle — why wouldn't they be happy, once their grief had passed? Indeed, he thought, everyone just needed time. "The others will come around, I'm sure. The dragons can't hate each other for long."

"That's true. We didn't get off to the best start the first time, but we were all brothers after all."

"The truth is, I didn't make myself charming at first, either," Kija admitted, blushing to think of when he'd tried to dismiss Hak with money, when he'd assumed the other dragons must be as eager as he was, knowing nothing about Shin-ah's isolation or Jae-ha's chains — but shared destiny had brought them together soon enough.

And it would bring them through this. All that weighed against it in the end were his own selfish wishes. His heart shook at seeing Yona's tears, but the right path was clear.

Still, when he looked back at the founder, he felt that ingracious twinge, that sense of being trapped here with this person, when their presence should be a gift. In the silence, it only niggled him more.

"Lord Guen," he said, "there's no need for you to stay here any longer."

"Now hey, I know you want to put on a brave face, but that's going a little far. Am I supposed to just leave you here?"

"That was our promise," Kija pointed out, feeling a little patronized.

"At dawn. Everyone else has plenty of time, and you only have until then," Guen argued. "This is your chance to give me an earful. If I have to carry the weight of your regrets, I don't want to leave anything behind."

Something about that resonated, reminding Kija of what Zeno had told him, that the previous white dragons' souls clung to him like evil spirits, but that he'd tamed them without knowing it, accepting all their regrets. Those, too, surely he was leaving in good hands. And as for himself…

"As a white dragon, I have no regrets," he said, his chin held high. "And as a human being, the regrets that I have are nothing that I can pass on to anyone. I will hold them myself and treasure them."

Guen nodded slowly. "Yes, some things are that way."

"I believe," Kija said, "that it will ease my heart more if you go to them. If you wait until dawn, and I never see you all together…"

"Ah. I understand." Guen still hesitated for a moment, then clasped Kija's claw in his. "The gods will bless your journey," he said. It seemed to be a traditional phrase.

But Kija took it for what the words meant. "They will surely bless yours as well."

With a final squeeze of his hand, Guen set out.

Kija watched him go, and he let himself relax. It was done. All that was left, all he could do for the others now was to watch over them. Who could say whether he would be able to do even that after dawn — no one had ever gone this far and come back to tell the scribes about it — but for whatever time he had left, he wouldn't abandon them.

So he stood and watched, alone.

Or not quite alone. As he let go, with nothing left to do but accept what came, he realized that he could feel something, almost like the touch of the founder's claw but more delicate and ethereal, so much so that he couldn't say when it had begun. But in this moment of bereft stillness and quiet, it was certainly there — a gentle, supportive pressure between his shoulder blades, over his scars.

He could feel a hand against his back.

* * *

Kija's body stirred.

"Kija?" Yona questioned.

Everyone turned to look, daring to hope, but from the way he levered himself up from the floor, the squint of one eye as Yona watched his face, it was obvious.

"Guen," she said.

He bowed to her, claw to his chest. "At your service, Your Majesty."

The reaction was quiet at first. Jae-ha gave a sniff.

"Lord Founder," Granny began.

"Come on," Guen shook his head. "If you're not going to use my name, at least call me 'White Dragon.'"

"Then… Lord White Dragon… please forgive us," Granny said, still sobbing. "Of course we're blessed to have you with us, but it's so sudden. Lord… that is, the lord white dragon you met tonight, I raised him from the day he was born…"

"I understand," he assured her.

Yona caught him by the collar and drew him closer. "Listen, Guen, this is… You can go back and talk to him, can't you? Kija wouldn't want to break his word to you, but if you talk to him again…"

"Your Majesty," he cut in gently, "do you think I didn't promise him anything? I swore to protect you with all my power. If he's gone this far in trusting me, how can I go back on it?"

While Yona stared, Jae-ha picked himself up and turned away again. "Don't bother dressing it up with pretty words," he snarled. "He promised this, you promised that — as if I didn't know you could kill someone with a dirty contract."

"Now hold on there —"

"Droopy Eyes has a point," Hak agreed. "Take someone less experienced, who looks up to you, and get them into a 'deal' like that — any way I look at it, you're the one taking advantage."

"If you'd torn him to pieces, it would have been ugly, but at least it would have been honest," Jae-ha said.

Guen stood to meet the challenge. "Don't you think you're being disrespectful?" he demanded. "Your brother is sacrificing his life for you, and this is all you can say? You couldn't even look him in the face — are you going to be satisfied, sending him to the next world like that?"

Jae-ha met his gaze, eyes wide with the shock of a nerve sliced open.

"It seems to me you should at least apologize while you can."

At that, Jae-ha found himself again and replied with a bitter grin. "Oh, yes, for punching him after that idiotic thing he said. The _last_ thing I'd send him off with is an apology for _that_."

Guen, grimacing, reached for his arm. Jae-ha knocked it away, and his feet dodged into a guard stance — but in a flash Guen had the dragon's claw around him and pinned him to the floor. "Calm down," he demanded. "Now, apologize."

Everyone rushed to break them apart; even Granny gasped in shock. Hak and Shin-ah tried to pry his claw away, but of course no one could break his grip. Zeno took Guen by the shoulder placatingly.

Another scene from the past was replaying itself and going wrong. Zeno was suddenly sure that Guen had done this before at least once, when Shuten took badmouthing the king a little too far; then, it had gotten him some angry barking and grousing and eventually the requested apology, but Shuten had been able to take it as a good-natured tussle. Jae-ha, on the other hand, was trembling with rage.

"You don't have to do that," he told Guen. "White Dragon and Green Dragon — well, the young ones understand each other. It's better if you just let it go."

"But—"

"Stop it!" Yona cried. "Let him go!"

From her, it was enough. "If you insist." He lifted his claw.

Shin-ah helped Jae-ha to his feet and tried to shepherd him away. For several steps he let himself be led — then he tore himself out of Shin-ah's hold and whipped around with his right hand suddenly full of knives.

"Lord Green Dragon!" one of the villagers cried.

Guen sprang to his feet. Zeno threw himself between them. Shin-ah tackled Jae-ha's threatening arm and Hak caught him by the other shoulder.

"Calm down!" Hak hissed in his ear. "If we ever want White Snake back, he needs a body to come back to, right?"

Jae-ha barely seemed to hear him, but with Shin-ah hugging his arm he gave in, let the knives fall, and let them steer him as he stormed blindly away, still shaking and speechless. Hak maneuvered them over to the feast table and pushed a bottle of wine into Shin-ah's hands; "Give him that."

It was a calculated risk; Jae-ha tended to mellow with alcohol and Hak had never seen him violently drunk, but then, he'd never seen him like this. He'd never seen Jae-ha lose someone so close to him. If it were himself — if after that night in the castle everyone had demanded that he not only acknowledge Soo-won but _like_ it and let himself be treated like _that_ — Hak thought he wouldn't have taken it any better. He gritted his teeth, disgusted with himself for taking it better now.

Guen backed down readily enough, patting Zeno's shoulder. "Look, you don't have to push yourself to protect me."

"I'm tougher than you think," he said. "And don't misunderstand. If I thought fighting with you would change your mind, I'd do it myself. But knowing you, you'd just be that much more determined, right?"

Guen looked at him, honestly hurt. It gave him an urge to patch the rift, to say 'I'm happy to have you back' — but how could he say that now?

Yona touched Guen's white sleeve. "It's not that we don't want you. I don't remember, but as soon as I met you I felt like I'd known you forever, like you were an old friend. But Kija… He was the first dragon I met. He's… Nobody can replace him."

"I know better than to try to do that," Guen agreed.

"But to lose him like this, when I feel like this about you, too… That's why it hurts so much…"

Zeno nodded; leave it to the miss to put her finger on it.

"Shuten is still around, too," he said.

Guen looked at him. "Really?"

"Not like me. He's kind of a ghost, but… He stayed here to wipe away his children's tears, and here you are making everyone's children cry," Zeno said, with mist tickling his own eyes.

But angry ghosts weren't a danger here like they'd been at the green dragons' tomb. Zeno glanced at the white dragon spirits who had followed Kija for so long. Now they were gathering around Guen. Certainly, Zeno had no worries that his old friend could handle them and satisfy their regrets — so far he seemed just as pure and unfazed as Kija always had — but Zeno couldn't help feeling a guilty stab of betrayal. The spirits had hovered over the tearful goodbyes, drunk Kija's self-sacrifice with relish, and now, so easily, they left him behind. All of them.

All but one.

* * *

Kija watched, his heart sinking more heavily at each new sign of the others' pain — Zeno's lowered face and miserable smile; Shin-ah's wary, vulnerable glances back as he knelt with his arms around Jae-ha, literally trying to hold his eldest brother together; Yona's tears, her voice saying 'it hurts so much'… He was watching the founder make all the mistakes he'd made in the beginning, with the same blind confidence. He was sure that now as then, it would smooth itself out in time — but he might never see that, and in the meantime it piled more and more weight on him to watch, to reach his hand toward them and touch nothing, not even air…

But every time the burden of it all threatened to bear him down, that hand on his back held him with greater and greater strength. By now it was clear — it was a white dragon's hand, and Kija felt certain that he knew just who it was standing behind him.

"Father," he breathed, "thank you. I finally met the king you longed for. I'm glad I was able to devote myself this much, but this… This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. To lend me your strength now… Thank you…"

The hand on his back pressed still more firmly.

* * *

Everyone had fallen silent. The villagers sat with bowed heads, mournful and reverent. Yona clung to Hak, sniffling and moaning "Kija…" Hak sat as her unspeaking support, his jaw tense and shifting as he tried to think of a way out of this mess and came up with nothing. Shin-ah still huddled and held Jae-ha, who had at least relaxed with the wine, but it only left him slumped on his younger brother's shoulder.

Zeno watched the two of them. Just like this, they were all that was left of the current generation.

Guen, unsmiling, toyed absently with his necklace. "This is…"

Zeno nodded. "They've kept it all this time."

Yoon edged forward on his knees. "Um, listen…" He felt half-silly, still thinking this couldn't possibly be happening; surely it was Kija he was talking to, play-acting as someone else. He'd seen enough to know that that couldn't be true, but he still couldn't believe it. "I get that you want to do what's going to help us the most, but this — it's not just about having the strongest person with us. We won't be as strong if we can't all work together, so…" He glanced around at his friends, who'd been joking with each other at dusk and now sat scattered in defeat. There was no need to explain.

Guen nodded patiently. "I know what you mean, but it's not going to stay this way. It's hard for all of you now, but the dragons can't hate each other for long, with our blood to bind us together."

Jae-ha burst out in savage laughter. "One big happy family, eh? If you think I'll forgive the person who murdered my friend — no, the one who drove him to _suicide_ — I'll never forgive you!" He whipped around with a snarl, then turned to scan the room until his eyes fell on the villagers. "I'll never forgive any of you! Who do you think put this ugly garbage in his head?" He let Shin-ah coax him back down and lifted a cup of wine, laughing again. "Congratulations. He made you all proud."

Jae-ha ignored the answering mumblings from the villagers. Granny pressed her lips into a knotted, quivering frown but said nothing.

Shin-ah clung to Jae-ha; he didn't know how else to help, and he held onto the sensations of a warm, breathing, shifting body that he still could hold onto.

He was the only one close enough to hear as Jae-ha muttered, "That idiot was always in such a hurry." He raised his hand and drew Shin-ah closer. "Listen, Shin-ah," he said, very quietly, "it's unsightly to get ahead of your elders, you know."

Shin-ah drew in his breath as he understood; Jae-ha meant to leave him someday, too. It wasn't that darkness; it wasn't _'I would rather die than stay with you,'_ but _'I would rather die than face losing you.'_ But still, someday…

He held on tighter.

* * *

Kija was still watching and listening.

" _If you think I'll forgive the person who murdered my friend — no, the one who drove him to suicide —!"_

Jae-ha's words plunged through his heart like lead. _No! It's not like that!_ But he was past the hot pique of being misunderstood. Now it was a cold, crushing weight. It wasn't like that; how could he leave a wound like that? He reached out, but he couldn't touch them. The only one he could reach from where he was now was Guen, and his pride still stopped him. The praise hadn't sunk in the way it should have, but still, after the founder had told him _'So brave,'_ how could he say _'Wait, I take it back'_? The dignity of tradition still halted him.

And it was Jae-ha's next target. _"Congratulations. He made you all proud."_

The ghostly hand on Kija's back seemed to freeze and waver for a moment, then it bore down on him with suddenly greater strength, so much that it hurt. It was no longer supporting him against the weight of his own pain — it was crushing him between the two merciless forces.

"Stop! It's too much!" Kija blurted out.

The hand on his back only pressed him harder.

"Why? This is… This isn't what you wanted," he realized. Of course his father would have wanted him to see it all through himself, but to punish him like this… "I know it isn't what you wanted, but I gave my all. I tried so hard! Please…"

* * *

Yona looked up at the high-set window, and her fingers flew to her mouth at the sight of a rosy glow in the sky. "It's dawn. It's over."

"Not quite yet," Guen told her.

"The ceremony continues until the rays of the sun fall on… Lord White Dragon," Granny explained.

Yona snatched Guen's sleeve. "If there's still time, don't do this! Guen, please, I don't want you to do a thing like this!"

"It's better this way," he told her.

"It's not! It's not!"

His face remained grim but calm. "Are you going to order me?"

"Stop it! Stop saying things like that!"

Yoon held her up by the arm as she sagged, shaking with ragged, panicked breath. Hak took her other shoulder. Shin-ah came back to her, and Jae-ha started to follow but froze, looking at the western wall.

The villagers saw it too and gasped and muttered. "The light…"

The sun had risen so high to reach this mountain valley, the first rays coming through the window already struck halfway down the high wall of the hall. Slowly, almost imperceptibly but unstoppably, the glare inched toward where they were gathered. There could only be minutes left.

Granny burst out bawling.

Yona tore herself from Yoon's hold as she whipped around to see the sunlight, then she fell forward on her hands. Her heart pounded fire into her blood. It couldn't happen like this — she had to fight it — but this wasn't a problem she could solve with a kick or an arrow. All she had was her voice — if that. "Kija! Kija, can you hear me!?"

"Miss, he can hear you," Zeno told her. He couldn't see Kija where he was now, but true or not, it was the only answer.

"Kija! Don't give up! I'll come for you!"

The village men gasped. "Your Majesty!" one of them protested.

"Where he is now — you mustn't!"

"That's the last thing he would want!"

"I don't care!" Yona snapped. "If he can go there, there has to be a way! I won't let it end like this! Kija, hang on and wait for me! I'll come no matter what!"

* * *

Kija had nearly buckled under the crushing, stifling pressure when Yona's voice reached him.

" _Kija! Don't give up! I'll come for you!"_

 _Princess!_

Her words tore at him, raw and sweet, as if ripping through bonds and ripping him open to the air, searing and freeing.

" _That's the last thing he would want!"_ one of the villagers insisted.

They were wrong. It was everything he wanted. But for the princess to go that far toward such danger — the edge of death — he couldn't want that. He wasn't supposed to want that. A white dragon couldn't allow such a thing.

He clutched his head with a roar. His body burned — or was it his soul? — but the world — _I can't I can't_ — was closing in to smother him again.

The light was closing in. It sliced through the air of this place, descending inch by inch like a blade to cut him off from that voice, from her, from all of them —

" _Kija, hang on and wait for me! I'll come no matter what!"_

Through the heat and pain Kija realized — this was the bitter crossing. He'd been so presumptuous to think he knew his father's suffering, his ancestors' suffering. Now he felt it — that bond, that love, that miracle, promised but slipping away. This pain — regret — too intense to bear, too precious to let go — perhaps the tortures of hell were nothing but this.

What monster, having felt this, would wish it on someone else? What kind of demon would knowingly inflict it on their own child?

And still his father's dragon hand bore down on him without mercy.

"Stop it! Stop it!" he roared. "Why are you doing this to me!?"

The pressure vanished. He took one breath — and then, where the crushing pain had been, he felt _claws_ pierce his shoulder and slash across his back, retracing his scars in one brutal stroke, leaving trails not open to the air but filled with cold, suffocating poison.

Regret _— can't let it go — can't change it — can't bear it_ — the poison flowed through him, pain upon pain, acid flowing through the cracks just where he had already begun to break, and now —

Kija did break.

"How dare you!?" he screamed, slashing behind him with his claw — but there was nothing there. There was no one in reach.

Except Guen.

He was no different. He knew very well what he was doing. The blessing he'd clung to with his dying breath, that he'd gone mad to feel it being taken away — how could he stoop to stealing it, and from his own grandchild? The memory of those kind eyes, that lopsided grin, the patronizingly indulgent words — _Do you want to try again?_ — streaked across Kija's mind trailing flames. Who could commit such villainy with a _smile?_

Kija reached toward him.

Guen turned as if feeling his presence, and Kija could see his face still wearing that monstrous calm.

 _How dare you? How dare you!?_

* * *

Zeno stared hopefully as Guen listened to Yona's cries, his face lowered and grim — but his jaw clenched tight. It was no use; he was set in his course. Once that happened, changing his mind would take much more than one night, if it could be done at all. Abi and Shuten and the king would have fared no better.

The light kept inching downward. The furthest of the circled tables were bathed in it now.

When Zeno looked back again, Guen's face had gone slack, his eyes distracted and distant. "Hey, I understand how you feel, but there's not much time," he said thickly, to no one in the room.

He was talking to Kija.

He shuddered suddenly; his balance wavered. "…Was I wrong…?"

Zeno darted to catch him as he collapsed. He shifted vaguely for a few moments, then suddenly the dragon claw swung forward, groping and massive, and tore up the floor mats with curling fingers.

"…How could you…!?"

"Kija!" Yona cried.

Just a low, distant growl — who could say how, but Zeno knew it, too. It was Kija.

A fleeting bolt of hope gave way to a cold grip of fear.

' _When the two spirits couldn't choose amongst themselves, both were lost.'_

* * *

When Guen turned — "I understand how you feel, but there's not much time" — the words were barely out of his mouth before he caught sight of Kija's claws coming at him. He dodged — away from the world, away from where Kija needed to be, but not enough.

"What is this!?"

"Get out of my way!" Kija swung again.

Guen caught his claw and gritted his teeth as they wrestled hand against hand, force against force. "Was I wrong about you? I thought you were so brave."

"How could you!?" Kija screamed. "How could you do this to me!?"

With a switch of his arm, Guen redirected the force and sent Kija spinning away, but he instantly came back around, firm on his feet.

"You're the one who said this was right. You gave me your word!"

"And you took advantage of me!" Kija roared back. "All my life I admired you, and now you act like — like a bloodsucking _insect!_ "

Guen braced himself in a guard stance, claw forward this time. "I didn't want it to be this ugly, but if this is the real you, you won't get past me — and I don't have time to go easy on you."

Kija charged.

He knew it would be ugly. He knew it would be struggle and agony, but he ran straight into it with all the force of passion. He struck on instinct.

Guen parried with his forearm and lunged, scales sliding against scales. An underarm swing plunged his claws in, under Kija's ribs and upward.

It was a seizing wave of pain. If the blow had struck his body, it would have pierced his heart; the battle would have been over in an instant.

But this was not his body. This was his soul, and his heart was unbreakable. The pain was only more energy surging through it.

Guen cried out in surprise as Kija's claw came up and tore into him, chest and throat and bone —

* * *

Kija's body thrashed on the floor, crying out in one voice, then another, then both. His claw groped and slashed, ripping the cushion before the feast table, flinging shreds of fiber and matting and splintering planks below. His robe and his hair spilled into tangles; the necklace beads rattled against the floor.

"Kija! Guen!" Yona screamed.

She tried to dart toward them, but Hak caught her and pinned her shoulders. "Princess! It's too dangerous!" Kija would never forgive him if he let Yona into the path of those blindly-swinging claws.

"What's happening!?" Yoon cried.

Shin-ah's eyes were open, staring in horror. "Fighting — they're fighting with each other."

Jae-ha whipped around. "The light! Don't let the light hit him!" With his right foot he hooked a table and swung it toward the east.

"Don't just stand there!" Granny commanded. Her bearers and the village men rushed to join in piling the tables to build a wall, build a shadow, but nothing could hold back the sun for long.

Zeno darted over to Shin-ah and clapped a hand over his eyes, clinging to him for support even as he shielded him from the horror and temptation — the blue dragon's power could only make things worse now, if worse was imaginable.

He knew Guen was devoted and stubborn, literal-minded enough to take Kija at his word, but to fight him for his place even when Kija chose to live — Zeno hadn't known that he would go that far.

But now, suddenly, he did know. No wonder the unsatisfied white dragon spirits had aligned themselves with Guen so easily; no wonder their desires didn't faze him — he was on the same path ahead of them. To do a thing like this, to take so long to read the signs, to appear tonight as if a thousand years hadn't even happened — these were the marks of someone who refused to let go and who had a god-given grip.

And if anyone could fight him, it was Kija.

Zeno couldn't see the battle — from the way Shin-ah trembled, he was glad he couldn't see it — but he could see the ancestor spirits drinking it in, the clashing passions at war with each other but both true and both hungered for.

 _I'll never let go. I'll do anything for this promise._

 _My life's worth is more than this promise._

Caught between the two of them, Kija's body writhed and screamed — it was cruel enough just to watch that much.

"Stop it!" Yona cried. "Both of you stop it!" She lunged and struggled against Hak's arms. She couldn't let it happen like this — she had only her voice to fight —

Unthinking, she screamed — " _Give Kija back!_ "

The struggling body froze as if struck, then suddenly jerked back with a roar, struggling upward. The dragon claw swung around, smashing through the shade-wall of tables, and it was Kija — raw and awkward, thoughtlessly graceful — who struggled to his feet, gasped in the light like a drowning man gasping in air.

Before anyone could reach him or even call, Kija's right hand sprang to his chest. It was a hand now, the size of a hand, but where it clenched, a stain of blood blossomed and glowed scarlet in the sun.

"Kija!" Yona cried. This time Hak let her go. As she dashed forward he was barely a step behind her.

Kija's arm lashed out —

And the necklace string snapped. Beads were flung in every direction and pattered like rain as they struck. Yona flinched as one of them hit her face, cold and hard and smooth.

Kija crumpled and fell.

Hak and Jae-ha caught him. Everyone rushed toward him. Shin-ah threw his arms around him. Yoon was shaking and crying.

The villagers pressed forward, too. "Lord White Dragon!" They said it again and again like a prayer — or a lament.

Kija raised his hand, weak and trembling. He took Hak and Jae-ha's hands where they held him up, and he raised his head.

"Lord White Dragon!"

He only stared back with wide, vulnerable eyes.

With her dimming vision, Granny at last saw through him. She shuffled forward on her knees until she could take his cheeks in her tiny hands.

"Lord Kija," she said.

He burst out crying. "Elder! I've done a terrible thing! I was selfish! I broke my word to our founder! I attacked him and insulted him!"

"I know, I know," she said soothingly. Tears ran down her own cheeks, but her voice was steady. "Do you think I'm going to scold you? We've all spent half the night fearing and grieving that our Lord Kija would be lost in the world of the dead. Maybe this was a sin, but don't think you have to bear it alone. This village — all of us — will bear this sin with you."

"Granny…!" Kija rested his head against her, his nose dripping tears, his chest dripping blood.

And then he fainted.

 **Chapter 4 - END**


	5. Healing

The village doctors were among those who had stayed, and together with Yoon, who had suddenly found his feet, they started to work on the spot. They pulled back Kija's blood-soaked robe and pressed fresh cloth to the wounds until the bleeding began to come under control and the cloths stopped soaking through, then added herbs and more cloth. The doctors had Kija lifted carefully onto a litter, covered with layers of borrowed cloaks for warmth, and finally ordered him carried away to his own house.

The villagers threw the hall doors open to the morning sun. Nearly everyone crowded after the procession as they left, with Yona first in line behind the litter.

But not quite everyone left. Zeno stayed behind. Shin-ah held back from the press of people, dodging into the lea of the front wall where a last scrap of stillness and shadow still held, shielded from both the flow of the crowd and the inrush of light.

Other than the two of them, the room quickly emptied and stood in an abandoned silence that was ghostly in its own way. The lamps still burned uselessly, eclipsed by sun that turned their brightest glow into mere shadow. The last of the incense still smoldered, its smoke trails shining white in fleeting wisps. By some miracle, the feast table had survived, but it lay long-forgotten, its splendor washed pale in the morning light, for a distracted audience of one. Zeno was looking around, but not at the food.

"Um?" Shin-ah called, raising his voice a bit.

"Oh, Zeno is okay. Blue Dragon can go on with everybody else," he replied, but without smiling. He noticed the lamps and started blowing them out.

Shin-ah knew that if he did go, Zeno would be left here all alone — and he was the one who had lost an old friend, who had spent these last few awful hours knowing that he would lose a friend at dawn no matter what. Shin-ah knew better than anyone how badly Kija had been hurt, but Kija already had a crowd of people around him, and Shin-ah trusted them all to take good care of him.

"No," he said. "I'll stay. Just…" In the harsh light after a night so intense, he wanted his mask, the familiar and comfortable way it muffled his senses.

As he stepped into the doorway, into the shaft of light, he heard something hit the floor behind him with a jingle. He turned, and there, just at the edge of the shadow, lay the little silver bells he had asked for.

There was no answering rattle as he felt in his robe; sure enough, they had fallen out. He stooped to pick them up — then paused. He was certain he'd tucked them away securely. When he felt in his robe, the bells were gone, but little Ao's acorns were still there. For only the bells to fall, and to fall just there, just short of the light that would break the spell…

 _He really did come. It wasn't that he stayed away — it really was like that…_

Shin-ah touched his fingers to the little silver orbs. To touch something that that person had just touched was almost like touching them again, after so long. It filled him with such a feeling of warmth that it overflowed into his eyes.

But he didn't pick the bells up again. If that was where old Ao wanted them…

"I'll give them to you," he whispered. "Thank you."

* * *

When Shin-ah returned wearing his mask, Zeno had poured some of the cold soups together and wiped out a bowl to begin collecting the scattered beads.

"I'll help," Shin-ah told him.

"Thanks, Blue Dragon." Shin-ah's eyes would be too great a help to refuse — but, "Listen, though; if you see a bead that looks, um, special? Let Zeno be the one to touch it, okay?"

Shin-ah nodded, and they both turned to searching in silence.

Maybe, Zeno thought, he was just looking for a way to distract himself, or maybe it was wishful thinking, but maybe…

Guen hadn't made himself known the way Kaya had, with a fleeting, fragile reach across from another world. He had never moved on to that place, had still been here as a complete presence — but in that case, how could he have appeared so suddenly? Where had he been, that Zeno hadn't seen him or felt his presence sooner? How could two thousand years have passed him by, that he would appear that night hardly knowing what had happened, as though he'd been alive just the day before?

And why, when Kija fought his way back, had he been so desperate to tear off the necklace?

Zeno remembered Guen trying to comfort him after his first mortal wound had healed, when he had begun to realize how monstrous his power really was…

 _I'm actually jealous, you know. You don't have to worry about falling in battle and not being able to help the king and the rest of us anymore. Isn't that a good thing?_

 _Do you really worry about that?_ Zeno had asked, an easier path than sharing his own thoughts.

 _Well, when I'm in the thick of things somehow I always forget to worry about it, but when everything's quiet, sometimes I think, what if I ended up having to leave everybody…_

At the time it had felt that much more cruel — Guen didn't understand how it felt; the gods had given that power to Zeno instead of to someone who would have been happy about it and been more useful to everyone. But now…

Guen was the one who had said the dragons' blood would unite them forever. That was what he had wanted, to the point that a deathless body had seemed to him to be a blessing. In the end, if he had felt it all slipping away, would he have reached for something permanent and deathless to cling to, even if it was something with no eyes or ears?

Was that why the spirits of the dead — especially Guen's own descendants — were attracted to the necklace? Because they could feel him sleeping there?

If it was true, Zeno thought surely he would be looking for one of the white, curved stones, but he found all five of them, and no matter how he looked at them, he saw nothing but cold, smooth, milky crystal.

 _Was I wrong?_ he wondered. Or worse yet, _Is he there, but I can't see him? Is there no way to know? No way to get through to him again?_ Having Guen back again after so long — was it going to end like this, with this much pain and then no chance for reconciliation, just a separation as unyielding as stone?

Zeno felt the blue dragon's presence come close, felt a tap on his shoulder, and turned to find Shin-ah offering him a cup of tea. "Oh, thank you." Refreshment had been the furthest thing from his mind, but it would feel good…

As he brought the cup to his lips, Shin-ah clapped a hand over the rim, shook his head and pointed. Zeno heard a faint, sliding rattle.

A bead had landed in the teacup.

Zeno picked it out with his fingers. The tea was long since cold, but it wouldn't have mattered. What he found was a little nugget of red jade with a white stripe running through it.

And there, cutting raggedly across the white stripe, was a crack.

When Zeno touched the little hairline fissure, he knew. He clasped the bead tight to his chest.

Shin-ah touched his shoulder.

"Hey, Blue Dragon," Zeno managed after a moment. "You can keep looking for beads, you know. I'm sure they'll want to put it back together."

Shin-ah shook his head and didn't move.

"Listen, Zeno needs to, ah, go over there for a while," he said, pointing vaguely. "I can't look anymore so I need you to do it for me, okay?"

Shin-ah hesitated but finally nodded. Zeno left him to the search, wandered off to a corner of the room, and curled up there, still clasping the bead.

This night was still a tragedy — to see his old friend end up like this, to see two of his friends hurt each other so badly. But at least that wasn't the end. At least the tragedy had a crack in it.

As he held onto the proof of that, he found his hand pressing against his medallion where he'd hung it around his neck. He raised the two treasures in his hands, looked at them side-by-side, and came to a decision.

He made certain that Shin-ah wasn't looking, then bit down on his fingers, hard enough to bring out the scales and claws. Then he pried loose one of the dangling wires from his medallion, the center one of the three. He slid the beads off of it and threaded the streaked, cracked jewel on in their place, then hooked it onto the top of the medallion and twisted the wire securely.

It was a risk. The medallion had a way of reverting to its original state no matter what happened to it, but this felt right. If it was a way of offering that bead to Heaven, that would be all right; surely that would be for the best. But Zeno couldn't help hoping…

He held the medallion, pressing the bead between his hands, and he whispered to it: "Listen, this thing gets treated pretty roughly sometimes, so I need you to hang on tight, okay?"

* * *

Kija was brought to his own room, to one of the beds laid out for the dragon warriors — even in the crisis the villagers left the most honored and luxurious bed for their king.

Where Kija had torn off the founder's necklace in panic, the gouges left by his claws were deep and would scar — a burst of curving red streaks like a sketch of a firework — but they were not so deep as to touch anything vital. The injuries to his body could not explain how weak he was or how long he remained unconscious.

"Our Lord White Dragon has fought a terrible battle in the spirit world and been wounded in his spirit," Granny explained, sobbing. "But don't fear! We have experience with injuries of that kind, and we know what to do!"

"What have you people been up to for two thousand years?" Yoon wondered.

There were indeed records in the village's archives about the care of spirit injuries. Luckily, they said, spirits were more resilient than bodies and could never be destroyed beyond hope of recovery, although if their wounds went unhealed it could cause grave suffering and incapacity and in extreme cases could even lead to the death of the body through wasting or suicide. Kija was in no such danger, however, and not only because of the blessing of the dragon god or his obvious strength of spirit. That he'd spoken at first, reasonably and recognizably, that he'd understood what was said to him and particularly that he had cried were all very hopeful signs that he should recover well if they observed the recorded regimen:

There should always be a light near him, but never a naked flame. Both harsh noise and profound silence should be avoided. Food should be as strongly seasoned as he would comfortably tolerate — apparently hot peppers were good for the soul. Above all, he should feel 'the touch of kind hands' and hear 'familiar voices beckoning him or speaking to him.'

The records noted the implication, saying that indeed the fewer friends a patient had, the more dangerous a spirit injury would be to them, but again, that meant that Kija's case was especially hopeful. Day or night, he always had someone beside him.

Granny herself took up the duty first. She had herself placed at the head of his bed, lay her small old hands on him and called softly to him. She remembered the lesson of the moment he'd returned, and so as she called him she said "Lord Kija" again and again, gently and patiently.

* * *

For Kija, his sleep as he began to heal was a deep, dreamless oblivion. Warmth, pain from his wounds, gentle light, touch, voices — they passed through his consciousness in floating snatches. Nothing else seemed to exist. He couldn't judge the time, but it was the third day of New Years when he finally opened his eyes. He could hear Yona's voice, but couldn't make out the words. He saw her sitting beside the bed. She leaned over him, looking into his eyes; she was saying something, but all he recognized was his own name. It was as much as he could do; his eyes fell shut and he sank back into the sleep of lost time.

When he woke again, it was past midnight. No sun entered the room. The glow of the fireplace, diffused by a paper screen, cast pale yellow light and blurred black shadows. This time it was Jae-ha's voice he heard, and he thought that he could understand with just a little more time, but the flow of words stopped before he could get hold of it.

A moment of silence, then clearly: "You're awake?"

He didn't know how to respond, but apparently the unformed effort was enough to give him away. Jae-ha turned and leaned over him as Yona had done; this time he wouldn't be defeated so easily, he would meet Jae-ha's eyes and listen to what he said…

But instead of stopping, meeting his eyes and saying something, Jae-ha just kept leaning, down and down until their faces touched forehead-to-forehead, and he pressed Kija back into his pillow. He ran his fingers into Kija's hair and gripped it just above the left ear until it pulled painfully at the roots.

"Do not ever do anything that stupid again," he growled.

Kija remembered the ceremony — recalling vague snatches was all he could manage, but it was enough. He remembered standing in that other place behind the founder, seeing the others crying, Jae-ha caught between rage and collapse…

His voice wouldn't catch; words came out as only a whisper, but he did manage words. "I put you through so much. And then it was all for…"

What had seemed to be the next words stopped him, but Jae-ha had already heard them.

"'All for nothing'?" he demanded. A dangerous smile could be heard in his voice, and he tugged the fistful of Kija's hair harder. "So you should have gone through with it, is that what you're thinking?"

"No… that's not…" It wasn't right. He knew that much. No more words would come, but maybe those were enough.

It was strange, like when he'd been punched at the ceremony. Somehow the pain as Jae-ha pulled his hair felt deeply soothing.

It was even a disappointment when Jae-ha leaned back from him a little and released his grip, but then Kija heard the fine rustling of his own hair conducted loudly through his own skin, and he felt the gentler pressure of fingertips running back and forth over the very spot that had been pulled at.

Still hearing and feeling it, he fell asleep again.

* * *

Jae-ha finally leaned back and relaxed, stretching out to lounge beside Kija and laying the prescribed hand on his shoulder. At least his younger brother seemed to have learned a little something from that moment of righteous, rule-breaking rage.

' _Bloodsucking insect,' eh?_ Jae-ha recalled the words that had tumbled from Kija's mouth, and he smiled to himself. From anyone else in that much of a passion, the insult would have seemed quaintly chaste, but he could just imagine Kija reaching into the depths for the most scalding invective he could throw.

He was human after all.

And now Jae-ha had something special tucked away if he ever wanted to embarrass him.

* * *

Kija's brief snatches of wakefulness were enough to reassure everyone. The vigil continued but was more relaxed, with more easy coming and going. Jae-ha started catching up on lost sleep. Yoon took turns at tending Kija's wounds, and was left to do it without anxious supervision from the elder or the village doctors.

As he refreshed the herbs and changed the bandages, Hak looked on and Yona softly told Kija everything Yoon was doing.

When he was finished and tucked Kija's robe and blankets back into place, Yoon sat back, looking thoughtful.

"Something wrong?" Hak asked.

Yona looked up.

"No," Yoon said, "it's just I've been curious. At the ceremony, before all of that happened… Did you actually see anything?"

"I managed not to," Jae-ha offered thickly from the next bed, then turned over and settled himself again.

"I didn't see anything," Hak agreed. He supposed he must have had the opposite problem and tried for it too hard; he had spent half the night inwardly calling after his king but had never heard any reply but his own echo.

"Did you?" Yona asked Yoon.

"I don't know," he admitted, vexed. "Before what happened I… I actually fell asleep, and I had this dream. I was in one of the villages back home, but it was a festival or a market day or something, and the streets were just lined with piles of food. There were these people — I don't know who they were, but they kept pulling me along like 'here, eat this; here, eat this.' And maybe it was just a dream, but somehow it felt… I don't know."

"Maybe it was some of the people you've helped, and they wanted to pay you back," Yona supposed.

"Or maybe, I even thought… Maybe someone who wished they could have done that, when they were…"

Yoon let it trail off, but neither Yona nor Hak needed any more hints to understand, and if he didn't want to mention his parents, best to leave it at that.

"Yona, what about you?" he asked.

"I didn't really," she said. "I didn't mean to, but I just ended up letting my mind wander and thinking about my parents. I remembered when I would lie in bed next to my mother — how warm she was, how she always smelled nice, how it felt when she held my hand…" She nudged Hak and laughed. "You remember that awful soup my father made for me that time? It was like I could just taste it —"

Suddenly she froze. Her eyes went wide, and her hand rose to her mouth. "That was it," she realized. "That was them. They were right there and I didn't know. Why didn't they…? I didn't… I didn't tell them anything…" Tears rose in her eyes.

Jae-ha sat up and looked over Yoon's shoulder.

"Princess…" Hak lay a hand on her arm, watching her wipe her cheeks. In his mind he called after King Il again; _Are you really okay with this? Would you really come that close and leave her like that?_

"I… I think," Yona choked, "I think I understand it, though." She wiped her cheeks again and tried to steady her breath. "If I'd known it was them, I would have chased after them, like… 'Are you angry? Are you sad? Are you proud?' I've done the thing my father never wanted me to do. I'm not turning into an elegant lady like my mother. So I would have… But if it was like that, if it was just little things like a dream, maybe they couldn't have answered me. This way, it's like…" Fresh tears fell over a quivering smile as she remembered those fleeting sensations, each one a token of love. "It's like, 'You don't even have to ask.'"

Hak settled with a sigh half relief, half resignation.

Yoon cast about awkwardly for somewhere to look and turned to Jae-ha, who noticed him staring and blinked back at him.

"I don't usually get to see you with bed-hair, is all," Yoon said.

Jae-ha's brows lifted even as his eyes drooped shut. "Concern for a lady is always a good look," he opined, and lay back down.

Yona laughed a little, leaning on Hak's shoulder. "It is sad, though, that Hak didn't see anything," she said at length. "Maybe you could have met your parents."

— The parents from before he could remember, from wherever it was that old Mundok had found him. He smiled with a gentle sniff. "I don't need anything like that. My family is still alive." He leaned over to glare at Kija. "—Somehow."

Yona smiled. Yes, somehow their family had all gotten through again — but then, she remembered there was someone for whom that wasn't true, and whom she had hardly seen since the ceremony.

She gave herself a while longer to calm down, then she leaned over to Kija and stroked his hair. "Listen, Kija, I'm going to leave you with Hak for a while." She bent closer to whisper, "He's always salty, but I know he really likes you. But you know that, too, right?"

Kija shifted his head with a soft moan.

Yona smoothed his hair again and stood. "I'm going to check on Zeno and Shin-ah."

* * *

On the morning after the solstice, when the crisis had first passed, Zeno and Shin-ah had still been there huddled in a corner of the great hall when some of the villagers came back to pick up the pieces.

The two of them had already found most of the beads from the founder's necklace, and the villagers went looking for the rest. It turned out that the scribes actually did have a document with drawings and descriptions meticulously cataloging the necklace bead-by-bead so that it could be perfectly reconstructed should it befall some calamity like this — and so they noticed that a bead was missing, one from the back near the clasp, where it would have rested on the nape of Kija's neck.

One of the scribes eventually came over to ask Lord Yellow Dragon and Lord Blue Dragon if they might have seen a red jewel with a white stripe.

Zeno shook his head. He'd re-tied his headband by then; the medallion swung with an unfamiliar clicking of the new bead, and he raised his hand to it, unthinkingly pointing out the theft.

The scribe stared for a moment, then bowed. "Understood, Milord." It was the last thing anyone said to Zeno about it.

The necklace was re-strung as completely as it could be and placed on a cushion at the head of the room where the villagers built an altar. The floor was hastily repaired, the tables cleared away, the seat cushions rearranged into straight rows; new lamps and incense were lit, and the hall was given over to a vigil for the founder's affronted spirit. Granny had told Kija, _'we will all bear this sin with you,'_ and the entire village seemed intent on honoring her words. People came one by one to bow before Guen's necklace and give offerings and prayers to assure him of their gratitude and esteem and beg for his forgiveness.

When Yona came, Zeno had never left the vigil, and Shin-ah had hardly left his side; the scribes and Shin-ah's friends from the watch had been bringing them word of Kija's condition. Yona saw them sitting together on some of the cushions, far enough from the front to give them some space. As she crossed the room, some of the villagers bowed to her, and she noticed the scent of the incense — not the grassy spice from the night of the Ancestors' Festival, but something more heavy and subtly sweet; it reminded her of the incense she and her father had burned on New Year's Eve for her mother and her uncle.

Shin-ah looked up as she approached, and she knelt down beside him. "Shin-ah, do you want to go and see Kija?"

He nodded.

"I'm going to stay here for a while, so you can go, okay?"

He touched Zeno's shoulder; the yellow dragon nodded to him and managed a tired smile.

Shin-ah left, and Yona took over the still-warm cushion beside Zeno.

"I'm sorry," she said. "We were all worried about Kija, but I shouldn't have left you here alone."

Zeno shook his head. "White Dragon was in danger, but the miss knows Zeno will be all right no matter what, so—"

"No," she cut him off. "It must have been really hard on you. I try to remember how I felt, before what happened. I was so happy I got to meet Guen. I felt like he was a good person, like even through it all he really was trying to help and do the right thing."

Zeno still tried to smile, but it came out more crooked. "He was always like that. If he thought he knew the right thing to do, you couldn't argue with him."

Yona nodded. "I did feel like he and Kija were a lot alike."

Too much alike, Zeno thought. He'd seen it coming — if only he'd seen it just a moment sooner…

"Say," Yona spoke up, "if you ever get to see him again, tell him I'm sorry, okay?"

"Eh?"

"I don't remember it, but I know that to him, I was his king. He really loved me and wanted to help me, and then I yelled out that he wasn't the one I wanted; it must really have hurt for him. In a way I'm not sorry, because I still think it's better this way, that getting Kija back was the right thing, but I wish it hadn't been like that."

She put her arm on Zeno's shoulder. "I should say it to you, too. I'm sorry I was so cruel to your friend."

Zeno tried to laugh it off, but it didn't come out as a laugh. "Zeno thinks that, too, that… that the right thing was getting this White Dragon back…"

"But that's hard, too, isn't it?" Yona persisted. "Guen was someone who you would have wanted to be on his side no matter what, right?"

She wasn't letting him take any of the easy ways out. He nodded, wiping at his eyes.

Yona drew him into a hug, cheek-to-cheek. "I'm sure I would have wanted that, too. I hope we can all see him again, sometime when it's not like that."

"Yes," Zeno agreed, and he let himself sniffle against Yona's shoulder.

When he shifted his head a little, he felt something small and smooth shift, heard a small click — she had hugged him on the side where he wore his medallion, and he'd felt the red bead being nudged over the edge of it and falling into place, held in the embrace between his cheek and Yona's.

"Miss… Can you stay here for a while? Just like this?"

"Yes. I can."

* * *

The weeks of the New Year's holiday passed. Kija gradually regained a bit of strength, and everyone gradually relaxed as the raw shock of New Year's Eve mellowed into history.

On the morning before the new moon, the village came together for a last outpouring of prayers to conclude the vigil for their founder, and then the necklace — minus the single stolen bead — was at last carefully placed in its chest and carried away.

When that was done, Granny turned to the assembled villagers. "What happened this year must be a warning to all of us that even our sacred duties must not blind us to the attachments of our human hearts. But who can fault our young Lord White Dragon for his devotion? No, as keepers of the tradition, we are the ones who must make certain such a thing never happens again."

And so a new rule was made, that the founder's necklace should never be worn again, but at every Ancestors' Festival should be placed on a cushion before the feast and honored with offerings and prayers.

* * *

By then, Kija had recovered enough to speak more clearly, sit up for a few hours at a time, or stand and move around his room a little. When the evening came, Granny and the villagers in charge of ceremonies came and dressed their white dragon in a heavily ornamented robe and headdress and made ready to bring him to the main hall.

"Are you sure you're up to this?" Yoon asked him.

"Of course. If I couldn't even do a thing like this…" but Kija let the answer trail off.

Granny was more sanguine — and had lapsed back into calling him by his title when she wasn't actively tending his injuries. "All he has to do is sit and accept praises," she insisted. "Our Lord White Dragon can do that in his sleep!"

At the ceremony, this judgment looked doubtful for a while, as Kija struggled with waves of tears through the villagers' prayers, but in the end it turned out that Granny was exactly right. Kija's head drooped with jingles of the gold ornaments until Shin-ah and Jae-ha had to hold him up, but the villagers only smiled his snores.

Zeno smiled, too, finally reunited with the group and finally seeing the white dragon spirits accompanying Kija again. They clustered around him affectionately and rubbed soothingly at his wounds. A few spirits did approach Zeno from time to time and nudge at the cracked bead, but they were firmly aligned with the younger generation and even seemed a little more satisfied than before. If Yona had put her thumb on the scale from the start, Zeno realized, it would only have frustrated them more, but when Kija stood up to fight, to hear their king's voice take his side — the side of _'you are more than your usefulness to me'_ — perhaps it had been just what they needed.

In the morning, when the new year dawned, Kija was left to sleep through the celebratory dancing and singing — and the weddings. Even his Granny could admit that he was in no state to get married.

Hak and Yona did go to the party, and when Zeno announced that he was going too, he'd begun to recover his usual sunshine and bounce. Yoon was staying to care for Kija, and Shin-ah was never much for parties, but Yona looked back at Jae-ha.

"Aren't you coming?" she asked. Surely if anyone among them loved a festival, it was him.

"No, no, I'll stay and help Mother look after the children," he said — then added, "If any ladies ask about me, please give them my regrets."

In fact they encountered a crowd of inquiring village women as soon as they left the house. Hak burst out laughing, although Yona wasn't quite sure why.

* * *

As more weeks passed, it turned out that Kija's tears at the new moon ceremony had been a warning of things to come. As his mind and body grew stronger, he came back into the world more fully and clearly, but he came back with every emotion raw. Granny insisted that this was a normal phase of recovery and would pass in due time, but until then, Kija would fall to weeping or frustration over the slightest thing.

When a winter storm struck the village, howling against the house and rattling the shutters, he spent the entire day, night, and day that it lasted sleepless, wide-eyed, and tense, but he irritably batted away any suggestion that he was frightened. He even snapped at Shin-ah for trying to soothe him, only to immediately burst into tears of remorse that spiraled beyond the guilt of the moment and lasted for hours. Only when the wind finally quieted was he able to sleep again.

The next morning, when they could open the shutters and look out at the storm's result, all the doors of the house had been buried in snow, sealing them inside. The housekeepers were prepared with provisions and wouldn't hear of their heavenly sovereign and her companions doing such menial work as shoveling snow. Zeno nonetheless found an excuse to dispose of some of it when he enlisted Hak and Shin-ah to help him bring basins of it upstairs and started an indoor snowball fight. It was left to Yoon to disarm everyone and melt down their weapons until he could declare peace over a basin of hot water steeped with herbs.

Kija had joined in the battle with relish, laughing immoderately for as long as his endurance lasted — and thankfully having the presence of mind to throw only with his left hand. As he sat soaking his feet in the herbal bath, his eyes brimmed with tears again, and his chin quivered, although he clung stubbornly to a clumsy, crooked smile.

"Are you okay?" Yona asked.

He nodded, pulled a deep breath. "I'm just — so glad to be here with everyone —!" he choked out, then began sobbing in earnest.

Yona wrapped her arms around him.

"We're all glad to have this White Dragon, too," Zeno said, joining in the embrace.

Yona could feel the others' touch or feel Kija moving a little as they all took his hands or lay their hands on him. They held on like that for a long moment, then Yona felt someone jerk and heard a small jingle, and she looked up.

It was Zeno. He'd backed away a little with a look of surprise. His medallion was swinging by his cheek; Yona realized that it — and the new bead he'd added to it — must have been pressed between his face and Kija's, the way it had been between his and hers when she hugged him at the vigil.

Kija looked up, blinking.

Zeno broke into his own clumsy smile. "It's okay. It's going to be okay," and he hugged Kija cheek-to-cheek again.

* * *

Yona went to bed that night tired and happy. She thought, _Maybe this is what it would be like, if we all settled down together somewhere._ The idea made her smile, although she knew that it wouldn't happen for a long time.

—If ever. One of Kija's lines from the New Year's Eve ceremony rose again in her mind: _'My walk in the light is brief…'_ It left her staring into the darkened canopy of the bed, pondering what could lie behind those words. _Well_ , she concluded, _that's true of everybody_. It was natural enough, on an occasion for remembering the dead, to remember death itself — and this year it had brought them such a painful reminder of how fragile their time together really was…

All the more reason to enjoy it now, she decided. She pulled the soft quilts over her chin and listened through the bed curtains to the sounds of her friends' breath as she drifted off to sleep.

* * *

Around the beginning of the third month, the snow piled in the village began to sink in on itself, the mountain streams thawed out and ran freely, and Yoon finally announced that they could leave whenever they chose.

It came up as they were walking together through the mountainside forest. Kija's recovery had reached a stage where the treatment regimen called for long nature walks, and the whole party had gone out with him.

"This feels so familiar," Yona noticed with a smile, "like when we're all traveling together. "I guess we'll be doing that again soon. It was good to spend some time here, but I'll admit I'm looking forward to it."

"We're just waiting for word from Mother," Hak said.

And that was when Yoon offered his opinion. "Weather-wise, we can leave whenever we want."

The crunching of footsteps on fallen snow and pine needles went silent as everyone stopped and turned to look at him.

"Really?" Jae-ha asked.

"We're past the season for really bad storms, especially once we get out of the mountains, and what we do have to deal with, the villagers can outfit us for," Yoon explained; he wasn't about to let Kija humbly turn down supplies and provisions this time. "It's just when we're all in shape to go."

Without naming a name, the implication was clear, and Kija's eyes widened. "That's — I wouldn't want to hold everyone back —"

"It's okay," Yona assured him. "You don't have to push yourself after something like that."

"And it's not like we're going to leave without you," Hak added, in case he was stupid enough to suggest it.

"Yes, I see…" Kija started walking again, but slowly, and after a few more minutes of threading their way among the trees, he spoke. "I would like to go."

"Hey," Yoon argued, "you're a lot better but you're not back to normal yet. If you push yourself too far just because you feel like you're supposed to —"

Kija stopped so suddenly that everyone knew Yoon had touched a nerve, and it took very little pondering to catch the echo of the Ancestors' Festival, when he'd gone much too far for the sake of what he felt he was supposed to do.

"I know that," he said slowly, "but…"

"You're bored, right?" Hak offered a way around the tension.

But Kija didn't take it. "Of course I'm not bored," he said, a little testily. "But… The way I feel now… It's as if something inside me aches to be stretched." He smiled a little, looking at his claw. "My power always used to feel that way, before I met all of you." He curled his scaled fingers, and his smile fell.

Shin-ah touched his shoulder.

"You're right to suspect me," he admitted. "Even now I'm asking myself, 'have I ever used this power as I should have?' That night… when I met the founder…"

Yona took a step closer to listen. It was the first time Kija had spoken directly about what happened at the Ancestors' Festival.

"It's true," Kija said. "He was much stronger than me. He had mastered ways of using the dragon's claw that I had never given thought to. It's true that a moment might come, when I might fail to protect you, where he would have succeeded — and now I'm asking you to take me with you when even my own strength isn't at its fullest."

"Aw, White Dragon, that's not—" Zeno started.

But Kija shook his head and pressed on. "That I'm the one here with you now — I don't believe that it's wrong, but I can't say that it isn't selfish. Now that I've come that far… Before, I could think, 'I was chosen by the gods,' but now I've presumed to choose myself. I can't continue to be prideful and complacent. So I do want to push myself further, to become worthy of it. But for now, I've put you all through something so terrible, and you've all gone so far out of consideration for me…" He had recovered enough to hold his emotions in check through the confession, but barely. He turned to the others and made a deep bow from the waist. "I can only ask you to continue to bear with me."

Everyone moved to offer their own form of reassurance. Shin-ah patted Kija's shoulder, and Zeno hugged him.

"What sort of big brother would I be if I couldn't do that?" Jae-ha wondered.

And Yoon: "Fine, but next time you die, I won't forgive you."

Kija was still bowing when Yona stepped in front of Hak. She looked at Kija's lowered head, reached down and ruffled his hair.

"Ah!" He gave a jolt and blushed.

"Sorry! I liked getting to do that while you were sick; I just couldn't help it one last time," she said.

"Er, no, it's — it's quite all right," he stammered.

"But Kija…" Yona leaned closer. "I don't like you talking like that, like you're not good enough. I know when I met you, I said 'lend me your power,' but now… I don't want you because of your power, or because you're the strongest. Even if you lost your power, or if you were hurt or sick and couldn't fight — even if I had to carry you on my own back, I'd still want you with me," she said, "just because it's you."

"Princess…!" He straightened enough to look her in the eyes before bursting into tears again, and she hugged him with her arms around his neck as he sobbed on her shoulder.

Hak watched for a few moments. "What am _I_ supposed to say after _that_?" he wondered. "'Yeah, I don't mind protecting the white snake'…"

"Shut up! I don't need — _augh!_ " Kija's protest ran aground in frustration, but it did snap him out of his crying fit.

Yona took his left arm in hers and started off on their walk again. "Listen, Kija, I really meant all of that, but if you want to get stronger so you can help everyone, I think that's great. I know how that feels." She laughed. "I'm a little selfish, too, you know? I think, 'if Kija feels that way, too, maybe we're not so different,' like maybe I'm not so far behind everybody."

"No, that's… Princess, you're very strong," he insisted.

"But there's so much more to learn!" she enthused. "Oh, I know! Tetra fights with bare hands, too, and that would be a good thing for me to know, if I was ever in a pinch. Next time we see Lili, we can ask her to teach us some." She gave Kija a playful nudge. "We could even be sparring partners!"

"Wha!? Ah — no — that's — I couldn't presume —!" The idea collided in Kija's mind with his own thoughts of what he had to learn, with the memory of Guen's quick, precise grabs. To try that on Yona — and then he noticed, as he somehow hadn't noticed before, that they were already walking arm-in-arm…

Kija's face burned crimson, and he tottered on his feet.

Jae-ha found Zeno and Shin-ah walking along together, and he took them by the shoulders in an aside. "I think our other brother has had enough excitement, don't you?"

They both nodded.

"Shin-ah, start looking for the shortest way back?" Jae-ha suggested.

Shin-ah pointed without having to look; he knew this part of the mountain from his time with the village patrols.

"Well, then, lead the way."

* * *

They stayed a few more days while Yoon and Hak arranged the supplies they would take with them.

Yona insisted on abandoning the posh bed, wanting to train herself back toward sleeping in camp. Kija still wouldn't take it back in preference to her, and after enough back-and-forth between the two of them, Jae-ha announced that he wasn't about to let it go to waste. Zeno flopped down in it too and called Shin-ah over to show him how soft it was, then noted that it hardly seemed right to have one of the four dragons missing — "Don't you think so, White Dragon?" — and so for their last few nights in the village they managed to coax Kija into his own bed, crowded though it was.

Kija did insist on forgoing a farewell feast, but on the morning they left, the whole village gathered at the gates to see them off. Yona thanked the villagers for their hospitality, she and Hak said goodbye to the people they'd met at the training hall, and Yona got parting encouragement from her archery teacher. Bows and good wishes were exchanged between Yoon and the doctors and between Zeno and the scribes. A few of Jae-ha's admirers even got farewell kisses on the cheek or the forehead.

Granny didn't load Kija with things to take with him this time. Supplies had already been arranged for, and she somehow held back from trying to send a suitor. She did call him close to her for a goodbye, both of them with tears in their eyes.

"I've been glad to be here with you again, but I can't hold my master here any longer," Kija said. "It pains me to think that this might be the last time you're able to see me."

"Don't say it like I'm going to die!" Granny snapped.

"I only meant —"

She cut him off with a scoff. "As if I need my eyes to watch over you. Even when you're far from here, I can still do that much."

"So I've noticed." He bowed to her. "Then, with your blessing, I will go forth and do all I can to be worthy of his honor and to express the devotion of our village."

"Everyone knows that, even if you don't say anything," Granny told him. "No matter what happens, you're our village's pride."

Kija blushed to accept it, knowing that Granny had been there at the Ancestors' Festival — she'd been the one to tell him 'we will all bear this sin with you.' She'd raised three other white dragons before him, and had been there when his father scarred his back. When she said 'no matter what happens,' she knew what she was saying better than anyone, and still…

This time it felt so natural that he didn't even realize the echo until he was already bowing and speaking. "I am so very grateful."

Granny's bearers didn't make a sound or let their smiles fall, but with a tilt of a head here and a sinking of a shoulder there, they let the sweetness of the moment show.

"Save your bowing for your king," Granny scolded. Finally, she turned to Yona and the others and bowed down on her litter. "Thank you for all the care you show our Lord Kija."

Yona bowed in return. "Thank you for taking care of him until now."

It was a reversal from the first time they'd left, when the village was sending Kija off to protect her, but Yona liked this way better. Kija started to protest but let it go and accepted it with an awkward smile.

* * *

As the party left the village, Shin-ah's friends from the watch escorted them some way down the mountain to give him a quieter farewell, and then Yona and her friends struck out on their own again, planning to make another stop at Ik-su's house before heading for a market town where they could gather information.

"Ahh, that was nice!" Yona declared, stretching her arms. "It's good to be traveling again, but I'll miss everyone."

"And it worked out well," Yoon said. "I'm really glad we weren't out in some of those storms, and they sent us off with plenty of supplies and money. Being up in the mountains makes for a longer winter, but we'll know all of that when this comes up next year."

"We could go back and see everyone," Yona suggested.

"Well, that's — that's not — you don't have to do that," Kija said hurriedly. "It would be too selfish to ask you all to indulge me twice in a row…"

"It's all right, you don't have to be shy," she told him.

"Are you sure you could bear to miss the Ancestors' Festival?" Jae-ha asked, with an odd mix of archness and sincerity.

"My duty to all of you must take precedence," Kija answered firmly. "After this year I'm sure — I'm sure that the spirits will understand."

"So then, that leaves the question of where to go," Hak pointed out. "White Snake was in such a hurry, we never did hear everything Yoon had thought of."

Yoon opened his mouth, raising his hand to count off the options on his fingers —

— But Shin-ah spoke first. "Awa."

"Yeah, that was high on my list," Yoon confirmed. "Winters are milder by the sea, for one thing."

"Good place to hide in a crowd," Hak agreed, "especially since a lot of people there owe us favors. And a lot of information would pass through, even in winter."

"The food there is really good!" Zeno added.

"And some of us could find work and start the spring with money," Yoon said. "Well, some of you exotic beasts are probably hopeless, but I assume Jae-ha knows what he's doing there, and I could find something."

"I'd love to see Captain Gi-gan again," Yona enthused.

"Yeah, Droopy Eyes probably misses his mom," Hak said.

"I'm human, aren't I?" Jae-ha conceded, fighting back laughter. He hadn't had to say a thing.

Yona stepped forward and took Kija by the arm again, catching his attention; she'd noticed that he was the only one staying silent about the idea. "What do you think?" she asked. "Does that sound good to you?"

He looked up into the sky as he walked along, considering it. "There are fireworks there, on New Year's Eve?" he recalled.

"Oh, yes," Jae-ha replied, "and a parade, with the streets full of light and color and music… If you're going to honor the dead, why not do it beautifully?"

Yona watched Kija's face and saw his answer: a quiet but hopeful smile.

"I would like to see that," he said.

 **Chapter 5 - END**


	6. Coda - One Year Later

When they set out in the spring, even Kija could admit to himself that the last thing he wanted was to face another Ancestors' Festival, but by the time the next winter came, the thought of neglecting the tradition was more bittersweet.

He still thought it too selfish to insist on bringing everyone to his village two years in a row, and as they settled in for the season in Awa, Jae-ha in his own oblique way seemed just as happy to be home as Kija would have been. But one day as they were eating at one of Jae-ha's old favorite places, Kija did mention his regret.

"Even after all of that, missing it will feel a bit lonely, I suppose," he said.

"Maybe White Dragon could do it here," Zeno suggested.

The idea tempted him for a moment, but he brushed it aside. "I don't have the incense."

The very next day, one of the traveling merchants from White Dragon Village found Kija to give him the incense, and the traditional tea, and the white robe. They even tried to give him a new over-sized floor cushion, and he had to insist, "We can't carry that."

Thankfully they hadn't gone so far as to bring the founder's necklace. With or without the new rule, that would have been a step too far.

When the night of the solstice came, Jae-ha did indeed get everyone the promised 'room with a beautiful view' overlooking the parade and the harbor, but then the rest of the party went down to join the celebration in the streets and let Kija and Zeno have the room to themselves for the ritual — since Gigan had kicked them off her ship when she heard that they were trying to summon a ghost.

Zeno brought out the room's floor mattresses and quilts for them to sit on, and he piled a little lacquered table with festival food including a set of five cakes wrapped in colored papers, a locally-traditional New Year's Eve offering to the Red Dragon King and the dragon warriors. Kija chose to forgo the plain white robe, but he steeped the tea and lit the incense. He recited a version of the ritual words, improvising to suit the occasion, and finally the two of them sat down in expectant silence.

At first, Kija was distracted by the muffled din of celebrating voices and snatches of music from the street below, but at last it resolved into a rolling sea of sound, and he let himself be carried by it and even lulled by its waves.

Whatever happened tonight would happen. If there was no visit, then he would have offered the gesture to the ancestors even so, and sitting here like this with Zeno was a fine way to pass the night and see the old year off.

And if there was a visit… Kija had learned some things the year before. The naive, eager courage with which he'd always faced the Ancestors' Festival had been smashed, but he had a wiser, accepting courage to take its place.

So he sat, breathing the scent of the incense, and waited.

This time, there was no mysterious unfurling of space, but as the hours rolled slowly by, Kija did have a sensation of something, at first too slight and vague even to put words to, but the feeling persisted, gradually gaining strength and form.

A nudge.

 _Just let it happen_ , he thought, hearing the echo of the year before. _Just be the anchor._ That was best; that would be enough…

Until he recognized the presence.

At that, holding back would have been the more disruptive effort. He risked reaching toward that touch — and he came through into that other place. He dimly felt his body fall back onto the mattress; the room around him faded and blurred as if hidden behind a veil, but he wasn't alone here.

Kija risked barely a glance at the huge man beside him before he turned and bowed to the ground. "Honored founder — Lord Guen, my profoundest apologies for my inexcusable behavior a year ago. It is too much to ask forgiveness for such a thing, and yet I must."

"So…"

Kija heard Guen's voice above him and felt his presence lean closer.

"…Are you saying you're sorry you broke your word?"

Kija's face burned with shame at facing Guen again and remembering what he had done — but even so, there was only one answer. "No," he said. "I am not sorry that I broke that promise — I am sorry that I made it falsely. If I had known my own heart better, I would have known that it was more than I could bear. Instead, in my blindness, I treated the very people who have my highest gratitude and esteem with terrible cruelty. I'm ashamed to face you again after such a thing…"

That other claw took Kija's shoulder and lifted him up with gentle, irresistible force. He willed himself to look Guen in the face…

…And found a surprisingly indulgent lopsided smile waiting for him. "Hey. Neither one of us came out of that night looking so good. Let's just call it even, huh?"

Kija blinked. "But, Lord Guen, you didn't do anything wrong."

"Oh? That's not what you said a year ago."

Guen was still smiling, but Kija's face burned with fresh fire that left him stammering.

The founder laughed. "Well, if you still think I didn't — you are one of my kids, after all. I guess it's in the blood. White dragons aren't stupid, but sometimes we don't change our minds so fast."

Kija puzzled at this — as though he hadn't learned from last year, when he certainly had. But there were more important things than to puzzle over it. "Zeno is here with me, if you'd like to spend the night with your old friend."

Guen craned to look over Kija's shoulder. Kija followed his gaze, made the effort to bring the veiled reality of the physical world into focus, and found that Zeno had lain over sideways with his eyes shut and his medallion dangling askew.

"Leave him be," Guen decided. "He might have a nice dream tonight, you know? Or it might be his way of telling me, 'Talk to the kid, you big ox.'"

Kija let slip one sighing laugh. It was an incredible gift to see the founder again, not to be a conduit but just to spend time with him, especially now that it was a chance to reconcile after the last year, but it left him feeling awkward. At least as he cast about he could find something to say, although it still touched his sense of shame. "Have your injuries healed?" he asked.

"It's fine. You didn't think a few scratches like that would slow me down, did you? I'm more worried about you."

"It's been difficult, but I've recovered well," Kija said. Those wounds were still sore when prodded, but he had his strength back, perhaps even more than before.

"That's good," Guen sighed. "I am sorry about that. You scared me, coming at me like you did, but after it was over… Well, I'd still say 'you scared me,' but I'd mean something else." He folded himself, chin on his hand, elbow on his knee. For once his head was lower than Kija's. "You really saved me, too, you know."

"How so?"

"Mmm…" Uncharacteristically, Guen mulled his words. "All of that, it was about what I wanted. I didn't know it then, or I didn't admit it, but… No matter how much things had changed, I didn't want to let go. I wanted to be the one."

"That's only natural," Kija argued.

"It is. And I still think you were right; this bunch would have warmed up to me — the dragons can't hate each other for long. But I'll tell you this much." He turned, still leaning on his hand, and looked into Kija's face. "I would have regretted it. But by the time I figured it out, it would have been too late to take it back…"

The mention of regret, too painful to bear and too late to change, brought it all back. Kija still flinched at the memory of those poisoned claws across his back, that crushing pain… "I suppose then that both of us were saved from our regrets by someone's unkindness."

Guen's thick brows lifted. Kija opened his mouth, hesitating to explain, but Guen spoke first. "Where your father got you?"

"Ah — you knew?"

"If I hadn't seen it, I would have heard about it — holy dragons, he was mad at me."

Kija laughed from the awkward shock of hearing one of the founders use that as an exclamation. "That makes both of us, then," he said.

Guen laughed, too. "I had it coming from both of you — don't rub it in!"

"What? No, I meant Father was angry at both of us."

Guen stopped laughing abruptly. He straightened himself and blinked. "Where'd you get that idea?"

"Well, something like that… It wasn't the first time."

"I know."

"But I never… I always admired my father's devotion. I was grateful that he held it so strongly, that he made such a sacrifice passing it down to me," — not just to the next white dragon, but to _Kija_. "I never thought there was anything I needed to forgive him for. But feeling it that night, when it already hurt so much… It felt senselessly cruel. I thought, 'Isn't it enough? Why are you doing this?' Of course, I understand why —"

"No, you don't," Guen said.

"Hm?"

"When he scratched you, you felt something, didn't you? Not just a cut."

"Yes," Kija admitted. "It took all the regret I felt then and drove it in deeper…"

"Okay, there's where it got confused," Guen declared. "Still did what he meant to do, though."

"'Confused'?"

Guen looked gravely into Kija's face. "He wasn't trying to show you _your_ regret — he was trying to show you _his_. He was saying, 'Here, this is what hurts the most, where I was jealous and I hurt you. Don't let someone else do this.'"

It struck Kija with a warming shock, and he took a moment to let it settle. "That could be right."

"It _is_ right. Look, I'm not one for guessing games about this stuff. Zeno's told you, hasn't he, how they follow you around? I wouldn't be saying anything if I didn't know it from the source."

Kija gasped as that warming shock plunged deeper. _It's true. Father is with me._ He'd always known, but now, to be hearing from him at just one degree of separation… He wanted to cry, _'What else has he said? What does he say now? Tell him something for me!'_ — but he didn't. He knew now what it meant to be only a conduit for someone else's spirit, and he couldn't bring himself to treat the founder that way. He'd already been given the message he needed most, even if he hadn't understood it properly.

His face burned again; his eyes burned with tears. "That was… He saved me… And I didn't understand…"

Guen took him by the shoulder. "It's okay. It's better this way. If your dad's anything like me, he'd rather see you stand up for yourself than just do it because he told you to."

"But I got so angry at him!" Kija sobbed. "It hurt so much — but how could I have thought such an awful thing about — about my —"

"Don't worry about it," Guen said, patting him firmly but soothingly. "Kids get mad at their folks sometimes. Trust me, I know; I had sixteen of 'em."

Kija was caught in mid-sniffle and choked. "S- Sixteen?"

"Yeah. Nine boys and seven girls." He said it with a smile, but then it faded. "That is hard, when I think about how how long they've all been gone… But looking at you and your folks, I think they must have done a good job."

He gathered Kija to his shoulder and held him, bending his head to rest his cheek in Kija's hair. "You make me proud, kid."

Kija hadn't fully regained his composure, and at that, he let himself go again and sobbed on Guen's shoulder. Such a gift — like the gift half-offered the year before that he'd been unable to accept — words to assure him that he was carrying his blessed fate well, the feeling of another white dragon's arm embracing him…

Guen rocked him back and forth a little, even after the storm of emotion had calmed. The two of them sat together that way as a deep, calm silence settled. Kija thought that he should say something, like _'Thank you,'_ or _'I'm honored,'_ but the peace of the moment felt too sacred to disturb.

It was so quiet that, from the world of life waiting for him beyond the veil, he heard the first distant _pop_ in the sky and cheer from the street.

Guen raised his head. "What was that?"

"Oh, the fireworks are starting," Kija said, breaking his voice loose again.

"'Fireworks'?"

"That's right; I suppose they wouldn't have had them in your time. To keep the village secret, we can't use them there, but they are very beautiful."

Guen craned curiously to see.

"Give me a moment," Kija told him.

When he stepped back into his body, he found himself staring at the ceiling of the room; all that could be seen of the fireworks was a faint, colored glow in the shadows where the lamps didn't reach. The floor mattress wasn't so soft that his head didn't ache where he'd fallen, but the pain was a small thing, and he picked himself up. He could feel Guen watching from behind him, as he himself had been the one watching from behind a year before.

Kija quietly folded the free end of Zeno's quilt over him, then brought his own quilt and draped it over the yellow dragon as well. Zeno smiled and rolled over, coiling the covers around himself like paper around a scroll.

Kija put on his cloak before opening the doors onto the balcony and letting in the winter air. The breeze from the sea didn't strike with the frigid sting of the winter wind in his own mountain village, but it had its own mild, heavy chill, and now it faintly carried the sharp, burnt scent of the fireworks. It was indeed a beautiful view as he sat down to watch, looking down onto a street bustling with lanterns and out to the harbor and the sky. Another streak of flame flew upward with a whistle and burst into a shower of orange hair-sparks.

 _Ahh, that is something!_ Kija heard Guen say. He could feel the founder looking over his shoulder at the celebration, the fireworks, the firelight wavering on the ocean from the burning offering boats. _This is the kind of thing we'd have done at the Ancestors' Festival when I was your age._

Kija started to reply. _I'd like to hear about that—_

"Kija!"

He heard Yona's voice and leaned over the balcony to find the others waving at him from the street. He waved back.

Jae-ha leaned closer to Yona. Straining to hear, Kija just caught the words 'beautiful view' — and then Jae-ha caught Yona up in his arms and jumped. They flashed past Kija in a streak of green and red, and he heard them alight on the roof.

The others chased after them, into the inn and up to the room. Zeno didn't stir even at the sound of their footsteps as they came to join Kija on the balcony.

"Everything okay up here?" Yoon asked.

"Oh, yes! In fact I…" As he reached for the words to describe what a blessing tonight was, he felt, from that place behind him, a hand reach forward and cover his mouth.

 _I'm fine like this_ , Guen told him. _Let's not scare them, huh?_

"Ah… We've been enjoying a peaceful evening," Kija said; that was also the truth.

"I wonder how much longer that'll last." Yoon looked over as Hak climbed up onto the roof.

But a few moment later, Jae-ha jumped down onto the balcony beside them.

"You're staying down here with us?" Yoon asked.

"Well, they do say 'three's a crowd,'" he remarked with a shrug. "Besides, it's been annoying me all evening thinking of the trouble Kija could get himself into if I don't keep an eye on him."

Kija laughed awkwardly — it was a fair enough concern — but then Shin-ah distracted him, offering a basket filled with various snacks. He hesitated for a moment over his own tradition of leaving food on that night for ancestors, but finally he picked a rolled, crusted cracker and found it gingery and sweet. "Thank you; it's delicious."

Shin-ah nodded. He took a stick of puffed rice and began to tuck it into his robe; Ao poked her head out just long enough to snatch it before vanishing again, leaving only a quiver of cloth and the sound of munching to reveal her presence.

The fireworks were coming more quickly now, by twos and threes, and they settled in to watch. Now and then, Kija could hear Yona and Hak's voices from the roof. He could look through the doors into the room and see Zeno there, still coiled up in the quilts and smiling in his sleep. Yoon and Shin-ah sat down beside him, around the basket of food, and Shin-ah pushed back his mask to watch the fireworks as Jae-ha fetched his erhu from the room, sat on the balcony railing, and began to play.

Kija felt his heart swell with the joy of it, and with a little pain. He wished that the princess were there beside him. He wished that his father and his ancestors could be there, or that he could see them there; it tempted him with a twinge of guilt, but he knew that the best thing he could do for them would be not to hold back from any of it.

But he couldn't countenance acting selfish toward the one who was there with him. Inside himself, he turned back toward Guen, who still watched from behind him. _Please, you're welcome to —_

 _No, no, I learned my lesson!_ the founder replied. _I'm happy right where I am. Seeing the dragons together again, having kids around me again…_ Kija could almost see that indulgent, lopsided smile. _Can't say I'm glad I took that long learning my lesson, but… I'm glad I was here to meet everybody._

 _Yes_ , Kija thought. He'd had his own lessons that he'd been shamefully slow to learn, with more surely still to come. But to be with everyone, not just at a time like this, but every moment…

He was glad to be here.

 **The Longest Night - END**

* * *

 _End Notes:_

 _While I was writing this story, somehow I kept encountering that saying about "the cracks are where the light comes in," and it seems to fit._

 _This started with a fairly throwaway line at the beginning of Not All Chains where I invented gifts the other original dragons got from their king (kind of in apology for the time he gave Zeno the medallion). Guen's necklace was just what I came up with — and of course White Dragon Village would still have it and of course Kija would gush about getting to wear it._

 _From there the idea snowballed into this kind of spiritual sequel — getting to meet Guen like we met Shuten in Not All Chains — and I immediately knew what the conflict would be: that once we got Kija channeling Guen, we would be in real danger of not getting Kija back. In the end, we do get him back (there's your Possible Character Death spoiler), but it's a near thing that ends in an ugly fight. I knew all this right away but it was kind of scary to go with it because, well, this isn't everyone's finest moment. Kija and Guen are both good and well-meaning people, but in this case their respective character flaws interact disastrously — they have enough of the same blinkered recklessness to go off the rails together, Kija's poorly bounded scrupulosity sets Guen's straightforward stubbornness underway, and I think it's fair to suppose that white dragons' troubles with Letting Go go all the way back. Plus the result gives everyone else a chance to have grief reactions that aren't necessarily pretty (e.g. Yoon never making it past Denial and Jae-ha going all in on Anger and Depression)._

 _Yeah, at some point I realized just how badly I needed to add the coda._

 _At the risk of undercutting the stakes of my own fic, though, I don't think even the worst case would have been as complete a disaster as it seemed — because I have thought about the "what if I had pulled the trigger?" scenario. As seen in the coda, Guen would have softened and had time to change tracks by next year, enough to trade places again. In the meantime, it would have been challenging, but I think the others would have warmed up to him enough not to leave with hard feelings. Kija would have been sad at first, but being dead wouldn't have been enough to stop him from doing his best for Yona and the others, and he probably would have gone off on some kind of spirit-world quest and leveled up somehow, although damned if I would know how to write that._

 _But that wasn't what was supposed to happen, because this way gives the level-up I did (?) know how to write. Yes, being a spiritual sequel to Not All Chains doesn't just mean meeting the original, it means a character development lesson for their successor. Jae-ha's lesson was "break down some of your walls" (and he's working on it in_ _Medicine and Poison_ _, bless him); Kija's lesson is "build up some of your boundaries." I think Kija is the one with the messiest enmeshment between his sense of self and his role as a dragon warrior, and when he can't align the two he has trouble valuing and standing up for himself for his own sake — so this is the outcome that moves him in that direction, however messily. See also his occasional lines about his willingness to throw his life away for his duty; this was a chance to rub his nose in what that would actually mean without ultimately pulling the trigger._

 _What the lesson might be for Shin-ah, meeting Abi? Well, sadly I don't quite have a plotbunny for that to complete the set, but I will continue to think about it._

 _As mentioned, I think this story came out messier than Not All Chains did. Like, most of the important stuff that happens in this one is just people talking, plus there's tons of exposition, I didn't know how to get to and from the climax without rambling, and I admit it's kind of clumsy in its determination and earnestness (like its focus character perhaps). But I wanted to get it done no matter how messy it turned out. Partly that's because I think the ideas and themes are worth it…_

 _…And partly it's because this thing is so dang fun to brainstorm side stories for! The village scribes with their airbrushed histories and their Kija Observation Logs! Feelsy, quiet character pieces while Kija's recovering! Shin-ah making new friends! Yoon getting to play in Granny's mad science laboratory! Zeno getting to keep the bead where ghost!Guen lives and the two of them maybe having more scenes together (gods they deserve it after getting put through this wringer) and maybe they even go back and visit ghost!Shuten… I don't know if I'll actually write any of it, but how could I not at least create the potential? (And in case anyone else feels the same way, I do have that blanket permission policy…)_

 _Hope you enjoyed the story!_


End file.
